


Newton Isn't Dead

by Macremae



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alice Isn't Dead AU, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, American Gothic - Freeform, Americana, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Fluff, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutation, Mutual Pining, Not Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018) Compliant, Past Abuse, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Post-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Road Trip, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2020-08-10 02:29:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20127868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macremae/pseuds/Macremae
Summary: Newton Geiszler is currently being possessed by a genocidal alien race known as the Precursors. They’ve taken over his body, leaving him a prisoner in his own mind. However, Newt has a totally awesome plan. He’s going to make a deal with them: let him prove that Earth is worth saving, and if he can’t do that, they can have his body. But convincing a hivemind full of mega-colonizers that one blue planet can be wonderful isn’t going to be easy. He’s going to need the help of his kind-of-ex Hermann,hisbest friend Vanessa, and one awesome Footloose remake to pull this off.So, naturally, they go on a road trip.





	1. Chamomile

**Author's Note:**

> this is very heavily inspired by the podcast alice isn't dead, as you could probably tell by the title, but the plots are not the same. there are strange happenings, and strange people, and a journey taken, but no character is a stand in for another. you do not have to have listened to the podcast at all to enjoy this story. with that out of the way: thank yous! thank you to silver for beta-ing and avelera for reassuring me that my precursors characterization was NOT ridiculous and stupid. thank you to jennifer's body for inspiring said characterization in the first place. thank you to jasika nicole, wherever you are, for being the voice of the narration as i wrote this. go listen to AID, seriously, it's incredible.

This is not a love story. It’s a road trip. So really, it has to start somewhere.

Exactly where it started is up for some debate, mainly due to the fact that the plan was composed of many separate and congruent ideas all formed at various places around the world. Some of it came from a high rise in Shanghai. More was formed in an apartment in Moulyn. A large edit arrived from New Orleans, of all places. However, where things really came together was a hotel in New York City, although we haven’t arrived there quite yet.

Before we begin, some background is needed. About a year prior to where our road trip begins, Newt Geiszler had been working at the Pan Pacific Defense Corps when, in a gambit to save the world and gain information, he Drifted with a section of a Kaiju brain without anyone else alongside him to share the neural load of an entire alien hivemind. This seemed like an excellent idea at first, but would later prove to be one of the biggest mistakes of Newt’s life. The unfiltered connection allowed the Kaiju masters, also known as the Precursors, to gain a foothold in his mind and consume it over the course of the next few months. The Battle of the Breach occurred in January, and by April Newt was fully without control of his own body. 

The Precursors set up shop at Shao Industries, where they began working and planning to end the world. Newt spent a majority of his days as a kind of mental ghost, floating around in his own mind while the Precursors took the driver’s seat. He could see almost everything, but had no choice over his words or actions. As a man of both, this was pure torture.

The worst part of the entire experience, however, was Newt’s separation from Hermann. He missed his… well, Newt didn’t exactly know what they were (or had been, he supposed). Things had happened before the takeover, when the Precursors were merely manipulating his mind and not his body. Things that Newt really didn’t want to think about.

He had quite a bit of time on his hands, though, so think he did.

All this thinking ended up leading to a plan. A plan that, if put into place correctly, might end his suffering, save the world, and allow Newt to make things right with Hermann. The problem was, there was a very slim chance of it working. Newt knew, however, that any chance was better than none at all, so he approached his captors and struck a deal. They laughed at it for several minutes after hearing it, but agreed out of pure curiosity and a desire to see their prisoner fail. Newt made some calls, took a sabbatical from work, and packed as many of his old clothes as he could find into a suitcase that followed him as he set off for Moulyn. He could do this. He could _do_ this. He was going to save the world again.

There was just one person he had to convince, first.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

Newt stood outside the door to his ex-something’s apartment, cataloguing his hands as they grew sweatier and sweatier. The air was cool for March, and it was strange to feel the sensation of a chill on his body again. He reveled in it, in the feeling of goosebumps and nerves, but was annoyed all the same. What had Hermann said whenever he was displeased? Oh, right. _Bugger_.

Inside his head, the Precursors were snickering at his anxiety behind their clawed hands, watching with glee as he tried to gather up the courage to knock. 

_You do remember how to, like, raise your arm, right?_ they said. Newt shot a glare to no one.

“Of course I do. I’m just waiting for the right time.”

_You’ve been here for five minutes just staring at the door._

He blushed. “Shut up. I’m in the driver’s seat from now until the end of this, so lay off, okay?”

_It’s not our fault you look like a creep standing there. Gottlieb’s gonna see you and think you’re a weirdo._

“Oh no, you guys took care of that for me. Thanks.”

The Precursors made a cooing sound that was vaguely terrifying. _You’re, like, so welcome! We do what we can._

Newt rolled his eyes. “If I knock now, will you all stop talking?”

_No promises._

He groaned. “Jesus. Fine, whatever, I’m doing it.”

Newt raised his hand and knocked three times on the door, biting his lip in anticipation. There was the sound of footsteps alongside a cane from inside, and the door swung open to reveal Hermann dressed about as casually as Newt had ever seen him. He wore a dark green button down tucked into a long, charcoal grey skirt that reached his ankles, and his socks were fuzzy and patterned with little plus signs. When he saw Newt, his face shifted from surprised to hopeful to closed off.

“Newton,” he said cooly. “What on Earth are you doing here?”

“Before you slam the door in my face,” Newt said quickly, “I want you to know that you were one-hundred percent right about Drifting with that brain.”

Hermann blinked. “I-- I’m sorry?”

“Like, _so_ on the nose,” Newt continued. “Worst idea of my fucking life. I mean, it saved the world, and that was awesome, but you would not _believe_ the past year, man. Oh my God.”

Hermann looked thoroughly confused at this point, obviously expecting something completely different. He eyed Newt’s clothing (skinny jeans, boots, leather jacket over a sweater Hermann had knitted for him back in 2021; nothing like his image on TV or the papers) and pressed his lips together. “I have a feeling I’ll want to sit down for this,” he said carefully. “Come inside; you must be cold.”

Newt shot him a smile, his first real one in over a year, and felt a little spark of hope as Hermann obviously had to keep himself from grinning back. He stepped into Hermann’s apartment and hug his jacket on the hook next to the door, rubbing his arms to get warm. “Jesus,” he said, “it’s freezing out there. Your joints must be hating this-- are you taking your meds okay?”

Again, Hermann blinked like that had been the opposite of what he’d been expecting. “Er. Yes. I have a reminder.”

Newt huffed out a laugh. “Good. Awesome. I know how much you hate winter.” He took a few more steps into the living room, which was about as spartan as one belonging to Hermann Gottlieb should look like. There was a soft-looking couch in front of a TV framed by bulging bookshelves, and a coffee table across from that, also covered with books and a small phone. The windows were open to get sunlight in, still coated with frost. Newt felt more at ease already, knowing he was on Hermann’s home turf. He turned to Hermann and asked, “Where is it okay for me to sit?”

Hermann was staring at him as if Newt were an equation he couldn’t quite solve. “The couch is fine,” he finally said, gesturing to it with his cane. Newt walked over and sat down, knees together, unconsciously trying to take up as little space as possible. Hermann stared at him for a few more moments before heading into the kitchen and bringing out two mugs and a kettle. He took a seat a good distance apart from Newt and poured them each tea, sliding Newt’s mug across the coffee table to him. Every move he made appeared deliberate and delicate, like a dancer or a drug lord. Newt cupped his hands around the warm ceramic and took a sip. His eyes lit up.

“Chamomile,” he said delightedly. “Your favorite.”

Hermann glanced away. “Well, I was making it for myself. Luckily there was enough for the both of us.” He folded his hands expectantly and gave Newt a searching look. “Now, I assume you didn’t come all the way to my apartment just for the pleasure of my company. What is it?”

Newt chewed on his bottom lip. “Uh. Right. So.” He paused, thinking about the best way to phrase this. “So, y’know the Borg?”

Hermann blanched. “I-- What?”

“The Borg,” Newt said, “from Star Trek. ‘Resistance is futile’ and all that.”

“Yes I know what the Borg are, Newton,” Hermann snapped. “What I’m confused about is how on Earth that topic came to you?”

Newt chewed harder. “Well, uh. Y’see. The thing is…um.” He said the next part in one breath: “Okay, so turns out the whole concept of ‘giant alien Hivemind assimilating people and controlling their bodies against their will’ isn’t as science fiction double feature as we thought?”

Hermann’s eyes darted back and forth as he tried to ascertain the meaning of what Newt had said. Newt counted to three slowly, and right as he reached the final number, Hermann’s eyes widened. “Oh my God.”

Newt grinned nervously. “Ha! Yeah! Uh, say hello to the Precursors, Hermann. They’re not in the driver’s seat right now, but they sure are listening. Whaddaya know.”

Hermann’s face was as pale as milk. “You… they…” He opened and shut his eyelids very slowly. “Newton, what the bloody _hell_ is going on?”

Newt held up his hands quickly in defense. “Before you freak out and call the cops,” he said desperately, “hear me out, because I know what I’m doing and I have a plan!”

“You have a plan,” Hermann echoed faintly. Newt nodded.

“Yes. I have one. And it needs your help to work.”

“Oh God,” said Hermann, putting his head in his hands. “Newton, what have you done.”

“Uh, funnily enough?” Newt said, trying for a joke, “Not that much of my own free will lately! But I can fix that, and I just need your help to pull it off. Saving the world again. Fun, right?”

Hermann did not move his head. “You have one minute to tell me how doomed we are before I incapacitate you.”

“Okay,” he replied, “I can do that. So. You’ve probably figured out that when I Drifted with Al-- _the brain_, it opened up a connection between me and the Hivemind that wasn’t tempered by any other people, thus allowing them to get through. They took over my body, have been piloting it around, blah blah blah. Big world-ending plans. But! But. I made a deal with them.”

Hermann’s head shot up. “You made a _deal_ with the _Precursors_.”

“Yes.”

His head returned to his hands. “Newton, you’re a moron.”

“No, I’m a genius, and here’s why: I made a deal with them. If I can convince them that Earth is worth saving, they’ll admit defeat. They’ll leave my body, back off, and leave us all alone. No world destroyed, no dastardly plans, nothing. How is that not awesome?”

Hermann raised his head and glared at him furiously. “You are basing the fate of the entire human race on a plan taken straight from the plot of Footloose?!”

“Yeah! Genius, right?”

Hermann slumped back against the couch cushions, rubbing his temples with his fingertips. “Good heavens above. We’re doomed.”

“We’re not!” Newt insisted. “It can work! All I need is for you to come along with me for backup.”

“Newton,” Hermann said venomously, “if you are so very in control right now, why did you not tell the PPDC you were being possessed?”

“I tried!” Newt exclaimed. “But they just took control back the minute I tried to pick up the phone! The only reason I’m talking to you freely right now is because they say so. They’re calling the shots here, Hermann. That’s what I’ve got to work with.”

Hermann was rapidly turning from pale to purple, so Newt took this opportunity to barrel on. “Look, I’ve got it all planned out, okay? You and I rent a car, take a little road trip across America to show them the biggest diversity of cultures and geography, and end at the Pacific Ocean where we can send them home! It’s fun, it’s failproof, and hey: we get to catch up! Plus--”

“Newton!” Hermann shouted, cutting him off, “This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You and I cannot play babysitter to an entire alien race while we drive across a continent utterly full of places to go awry. I am calling the PPDC and getting this entire mess sorted out. Stay there.” 

He pointed at Newt’s chest with his finger and made to stand, but Newt felt his arm shoot up and grab Hermann’s wrist. “Oh, fu--” he managed before he felt himself being suddenly stripped of his senses and kicked out of his body into the air. 

It was like dissociation, but a hundred times worse. Newt felt his hold on himself being peeled away in a time shorter than a millisecond, shoving his consciousness out of his body like a rude customer in line. He made a panicked sound that no one could hear, struggling to keep his presence intact as he was unceremoniously removed from his own goddamn self.

Newt, now in a more ghostly form, scrambled for a hold before floating around next to his body, which was currently under vastly different ownership. The Precursors slouched back into a more leisurely position, gripping Hermann’s wrist tightly. “Yeah, we don’t think so, Gottlieb,” they said, twisting Newt’s voice into something smug and slimy. Hermann scowled.

“Precursors.”

They smiled cheerily. “Like, yola, my bud. It’s been a loooooong while since we’ve gotten to chat. How’ve ya been? Did you enjoy the dreams?”

Hermann’s face flashed into one of fear for a second, before quickly returning to a look of stony composure. “Let go of me,” he said coldly. The Precursors shook their head.

“Nah. See, we like this little plan Geiszler has come up with, and we want you to help. It’s more fun to watch him gain a teeny, weeny bit of hope and slowly lose it, than just torture him all the time. Adds some variety. Spice of life, ya know?”

“I don’t.”

The Precursors giggled. “Oh yeah, that’s for sure. But here’s the deal, Hermykins: it’s either our way, or the highway. This is the only way you’re getting Geiszler back from us. If you try to jail our puppet and pry him out using anything else, we won’t ever give him up. Pinkie promise. So what’s it gonna be? Scenic drives and ‘I Spy’? Or watching your little lab rat waste away in prison for the rest of his life?” They winked. “The choice is yours.”

Hermann and the Precursors stared each other down for a good, long minute, Newt watching nervously from the sidelines. The Precursors flicked their eyebrows up and down playfully, while Hermann’s jaw clenched tighter and tighter. _Please, Hermann,_ Newt mumbled, _we can do this, it can work, just please say yes_.

Finally, he sighed. “Fine.”

The Precursors let go of his wrist dramatically and flicked it away. “Good choice, Gottlieb! Have a little fun with him before the apocalypse. Geiszler’s got most of the stuff all ready to go, so you don’t have anything to worry about! Isn’t that nice?”

“I am going to destroy you,” Hermann snarled, his eyes burning a hole into the Precursors’ forehead. They snorted.

“Okay, drama queen. Whatever.” They glanced up at Newt floating beside them. “You can come back in now, Geiszler. You’ve been such a good boy, after all.”

Newt rolled his eyes but let himself be sucked back into his body, blinking as his vision readjusted to his physical eyes. Hermann leaned in towards him, frowning.

“Newton? Is that you?”

Newt nodded, rubbing his eyelids. “Yeah, yeah it’s me. Sorry about that.”

Hermann let out a sigh of relief and moved away. “It’s fine. I’m beginning to realize a lot of things this past year have not been your fault at all.”

“No, seriously,” Newt said, taking Hermann’s hand without thinking, “Hermann, I’m sorry. I was an asshole and an idiot, and I shouldn’t have treated you as badly as I did. Maybe there was a little extra help around there, but that was still me. And you didn’t deserve any of that.”

Hermann pinkened a little, and glanced down at their hands. Newt followed his gaze, and quickly sucked in a breath and jerked his hand backwards. “Sorry,” he said again, “sorry, I forgot-- sorry.”

Hermann looked away. “It’s fine,” he said. “You weren’t in your right mind. I can’t exactly blame you for things I now know you never wanted to say in the first place.”

“But--” Newt tried, but Hermann held up a hand to stop him.

“Newton. It’s alright. I’m not upset anymore. I’m just glad you’re here now.” He smiled, and Newt’s heart did a backflip in his chest. “Thank you for coming to me.”

_Gross,_ the Precursors groaned. _Just mash faces with him already you freak._

Newt was just about to snap at them to shut the hell up, when a crackly voice from nowhere said, “Uh… what the fuck?”

Newt jumped in his seat, while Hermann went pale again. “Hermann,” Newt said cautiously, “what was that?”

Hermann turned and snatched the phone on the coffee table, holding it up to his mouth frantically. “Vanessa,” he said quickly, “how much of that did you overhear?”

“Everything,” came a female-sounding voice from the phone. “Hi Newt! Hi Precursors! I’m Vanessa! It’s like, technically nice to meet y’all!”

Newt shot Hermann a look meant to say, “Who the fuck is she?” but he waved his hand at Newt to be quiet. “Vanessa,” he said, “I need you to forget everything you just heard and not tell the authorities.”

“The second bit I can do,” replied Vanessa, “but the first bit? Not gonna happen. Oh, oh-- you guys should let me come too!”

Hermann made a face. “Are you insane? Absolutely not! This is official PPDC rescue business, and a civilian is not going to--”

“Bullshit,” said Vanessa brightly. “Newt’s in the private sector now. Besides, I make _the best_ playlists, and I know I’m a better driver than you, and I’ve been all across the country for modeling, so you have to let me come! Please please please please please?”

“No!” Hermann insisted. “I refuse to let you get tangled up in--”

“Okay,” she interrupted, “if you don’t let me come, I’m telling Newt that you still lo--”

“Fine!” Hermann screeched at a pitch Newt had never heard before. “Fine. You can come. Bloody hell, Vanessa.”

Newt winced as she let out a happy squeal from the other end. “Hell yeah! Okay, we’ll start in NY, obvi, so fly out to there and I’ll drive up tomorrow. I’ll meet you there in two days. Be thinking of fun places we could go!”

“Uh, do I get a say in--” Newt started, but Vanessa interrupted him again.

“Have fun you two, stay safe, keep it sexy, byeeeeeee!”

With a click, the line went dead.

Newt sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “Wow,” he said, “uh, whoever your friend is, she sounds like a real character.” Hermann dragged a hand across his face. He had aged in the year they had been apart; not badly, but it still worried Newt. How much stress had he been under? How much of that had been Newt’s fault?

“I suppose three is better than one anyway,” Hermann replied, moving his hand to rest his chin in it. “You are alright with this, are you, Newton? I realize I forgot to ask in all the commotion.”

Newt shrugged. “I don’t see why not. More backup in case things go wrong.”

Hermann sighed. “Oh God. We’re actually doing this, aren’t we? We’re going to save the world with a road trip.”

Newt gave him what he hoped was an encouraging grin. “Don’t worry,” he said, “America might be kind of a shithole politically, but when it comes to great stuff to do? We’re gonna convince them in no time. You’ll see, Hermann; this’ll all be one crazy awful memory we’ll laugh at in a few years. Everything’s gonna be fine.”

It would be fine, thought Newt, pointedly ignoring the pitying cackling of the Precursors inside the back of his head.


	2. Newton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw this chapter for: hospitalization mention, a lot of mental healthy discussion, and whatever comes with this version of the precursors

Newt had become very familiar with air travel over the past year of working for Shao Industries; it was quick and efficient and allowed him to work while on the move. The Precursors always had something to say about how tiny everything looked from that high, but Newt mainly spent the flights wandering around the cabin and looking over everyone’s shoulders. To the places he was sent, the planes were usually filled with other high-powered business executives, or wealthy families on vacation. It was oddly interesting to watch them go about their work, or sleep, or urge their children to quiet down. Or, at least, a good way to pass the time. 

On the flight to New York, however, two things were different. One: Newt was entirely in control of himself, and thus unable to just float around and spy on people’s personal lives. Two: he was not traveling alone.

Hermann took the trip as an opportunity to read as many guidebooks as he had been able to find, plotting the best route for them to take across the country. He consulted Newt often, which was confusing both because of how Newt had been treated the past year, and because Hermann was asking his opinion about something other than work. It almost felt like they were two partners planning a nice trip together— and didn’t _that_ send a funny feeling to his chest.

Newt tamped it down quickly. They were on a mission; a world-saving mission, at that. He couldn’t get distracted by stupid things like what he wanted.

The plane touched down early enough in the morning that their room wasn’t ready yet, so after leaving their small suitcases with the hotel staff, Hermann suggested they visit the MOMA for a lesson in art. The halls were cool and not terribly crowded, which Newt and Hermann both enjoyed for entirely different reasons. When they passed into the first gallery, Hermann turned to him, barely concealed curiosity on his face.

“Newton,” he said quietly, “what exactly happened during this past year? You said you weren’t in control of your own body but… well, I’m not certain how that could be true.”

Newt pressed his lips together, thinking. He tapped his fingers on his jeans. “Huh. Okay. Well, hindsight twenty-twenty, let’s see: I thought I was having a depressive episode at first, because I felt like absolute shit. Like, constant nightmares, mood swings like you wouldn’t _believe_, and maybe two months in I started hallucinating a bit, too. Shadows at first, corner of your eye type of stuff, but then… I dunno, tentacles and eyes and stuff like that? I, uh, I don’t have the best memory of right then.”

“They were settling into your brain,” Hermann surmised. Newt nodded.

“Essentially, I think so. Then I started dissociating really, and I mean _really_ badly, to the point where I would sort of go out of my body for periods of time. I wouldn’t be able to move, or I’d lose track of time; real dysfunctional shit. The stress just kept getting worse and worse and worse, and I was exhausted and freaked out and totally aware that I was spiraling so I kind of…” He looked away, brow furrowing. “Took it out on everybody. Bad. And didn’t think through much of anything I did.”

“Is that why you took the position with Shao?” Hermann asked. Newt shot him a look.

“Yeah, Hermann, that’s why I, a known socialist and anti-facist, took an executive job with a fucking uber-capitalist tech startup run by a woman who, were I not a feminist, I would call a shit ton of unflattering names,” he said dryly. “Honestly, I’m surprised that didn’t tip you off majorly.”

Hermann pinkened a bit. “I, ah… I assumed it was just to get back at me for… well.”

Newt’s eyes widened, and he quickly ran a hand through his hair. “Oh. Uh. M—maybe that was it. Like I said, uh, I don’t really remember things that well.”

“Does that include—?” Hermann asked, then stopped himself. “Right. Yes. Well, I certainly should have been more observant.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Newt said a little too cheerfully. “I was an asshole; I don’t blame you for not wanting anything to do with me.”

“Newton, you don’t—”

“Anyway,” he continued, cutting Hermann off before he could say anything more, “I told them I’m on sabbatical now, but I’d rather french kiss an exhaust pipe than go back. I mean, I don’t understand anything they’re having me do, Hermann. Basic mechanics? Yeah, I can fix a washer or tune up a car or build a PONS, but this kind of stuff is bleeding edge tech. Half the time I come up to the surface and see what I’m working on and have no idea what’s happening. It sucks! Also: my boss is a capitalist bi—_person_, I can’t understand Mandarin, and I hate her. And capitalism. Did I mention I hate that? Cause Hermann, I’m so majorly fucking opposed to what Shao is doing, I’m literally this close to leaving a copy of Karl Marx on my boss’ desk. Like, this fucking close.”

A strange look spread across Hermann’s face that Newt couldn’t decipher as he watched him gesture wildly while he talked. There was a small smile, and something in his eyes that almost looked like—relief? Fondness? He couldn’t say.

_You are literally? So fucking pathetic._ the Precursors groaned. Newt glared at no one in particular, and he looked up in time to see Hermann’s expression melt away into one of clear concern. 

“Was that them?” he asked. Newt rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah. Assholes.”

Hermann looked like he was choosing his next words carefully. “What—what do they say to you, Newton?”

Newt blinked. “What?”

“I mean… you know you shouldn’t listen to a word they say, yes? You are a good man, and a wonderful person, and—”

Newt held a hand up in confusion. “Hermann. What do you think they’re saying?”

He frowned harder. “... Horrible things?”

Newt gave him an odd look. “Okay, Precursors, you can chime in if you want, but—they’re not whispering in my ear all the time, saying I’m a worthless piece of shit. Sure, my ego’s taken a hit, but I’m not gonna kill myself over it or anything. They’re basically… well, they’re basically big whiny babies. What’s the word… primadonna! They’re primadonnas.” 

Hermann’s expression went flat. “You—are calling a monsterous hivemind a primadonna.” 

“Yeah! The Precursors don’t even think that humanity is ‘beneath them and needs to be killed’ or whatever—-- we’re just in the way. They’re like land developers who bulldoze forests and kick all the animals out; they’re greedy and dumb and they love capitalism. But they’re not pure evil, Hermann. I mean, close, but not entirely.”

Newt felt his mouth move without warning. “_We are not whiny. We just think you should dress better._”

“Dude, those suits you made me wear were terrible,” he snapped back, “Stick with the leather jacket, it’s a classic.”

“_The floral patterned vest paired with the striped shirt was an articulate fashion choice and you people have no reason to be mean about it._”

“I have every reason, man, you don’t know humans and you don’t know what’s cool.”

Their voice rose in pitch and volume. “_We did research!_”

“You looked at half a copy of the Hot Topic sales catalogue and went from there! I’m bi, dude. I have a license to dress awesome.”

“_You already owned that catalogue in the first place!_”

Newt was about to yell something back when he felt a sudden hand on his shoulder. Hermann looked down at him apologetically. “Er, Newton. We’re attracting a bit of attention.”

Newt blinked and glanced around. Sure enough, the few patrons in the gallery with them were looking at him oddly, as if talking to oneself were an action out of the ordinary. Which, he remembered, it was. Shit.

“Uh,” Newt said loudly, “sorry everyone. Bluetooth.” He grinned weakly. “Have a nice day!” Then, under his breath, “Keep it down, you guys, Jesus.”

_You started it._

“For fuck’s sake—!”

“Ah, perhaps we should be moving on,” Hermann said quickly, and grabbed Newt by the hand to usher him to the next gallery. The man could walk quickly when he needed to, and Newt stumbled a bit as he was pulled along. By the time he looked up they were already in front of another painting, but when he recognized it, he froze.

“Oh,” said Newt softly, his breath catching. “Hey. I like this painting.”

It was “Starry Night”. The original, in fact. Swirling blues and whites and yellows across a sky punctuated with city peaks and treetops, with not a trace of the window from which it was seen. Newt felt something lodge itself in his throat. His heart squeezed a funny beat. His nose hurt. 

“_You didn’t paint when you were in an asylum._” the Precursors said out loud. Newt swallowed hard.

“It wasn’t an asylum. It was a psych ward in a hospital. There’s a difference.” He turned to Hermann sheepishly. “You probably saw that when we Drifted, huh.”

Hermann looked away politely. “I didn’t want to pry.”

Newt shrugged more casually than he felt. “It’s okay, dude, it happened. Can’t change the past.” He glanced down, realizing that he and Hermann were still holding hands. “Shit—” he hissed, jerking his away before Hermann could notice and become upset. “Sorry, I keep-—sorry.”

Hermann didn’t reply, just stared at the painting. After a moment, he said, “You had a poster of this. In your bunk in Hong Kong.”

Newt looked at him, surprised. “Yeah. I took it from my college dorm. You remember that?” 

“Of course,” he replied faintly, not seeming to be aware of his surroundings. “I remember everything.”

That was… a loaded statement. It was Newt’s turn to look away, and he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them from doing something stupid, like grabbing Hermann’s. The jeans were roomier than what styles he had grown used to over the past year—looser. Which was odd, seeing as they had fit like a glove during the war. Newt frowned slightly. He wasn’t in the mood to explore that right now.

Hermann took a picture of the painting with his phone before they moved on. Newt didn’t look at it again. The funny feeling in his chest had gone from warm yet painful, to something that twisted all wrong. 

The Precursors had thrown the poster out long ago, anyway. 

After walking through another handful of galleries, they sat down in the museum cafe and filled two paper cups with bland, overly fruity coffee. Hermann sent the other pictures he had taken to Vanessa while Newt bounced his leg under the table. The longer he spent in control of his body, the more of his nervous habits and stims came back. He put a hand on his knee to stop it, but the other quickly replaced it within moments. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Hermann’s cheeks reddened, and he quickly placed his phone facedown on the table. Something ugly turned circles in Newt’s gut. He had a pretty good idea who this “Vanessa” was supposed to be, and while he was logically happy Hermann had moved on and found someone else to support him, the childish, overly emotional part of him seethed with jealousy.

This is not a love story. It’s a road trip. So, some background is needed before we gather too much momentum.

The night of V-Day, Newt and Hermann had stumbled out of the Loccent celebrations and into Hermann’s quarters and onto his bed, where they shared a passionate night of wildly enjoyable and extremely clumsy and inexperienced sex that resulted in equally passionate declarations of love, and promises to rebuild their post-war lives together. Both were wildly drunk at the time, and both assumed neither would remember this in the morning.

The next day in the lab was fraught with uncomfortable tension that lasted until the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Hermann received a request to continue working for the PPDC. Newt received an offer from Shao Industries to head their Department of Research and Development. The ensuing fight was less about jobs and more about what each man meant to each other, but neither was willing to admit it. 

Newt was exhausted, depressed, and suffering from an entirely new and not-quite-natural type of PTSD. He took the job.

It was both the worst mistake, and biggest regret, of his entire life. 

All Newt wanted was to go back to that fight and confess what he had kept secret: that he did remember their night together, that he had never felt happier then, and that he wanted every night for the rest of his life to be like that. He wanted to tell Hermann that he was unable to sleep from horrifically vivid nightmares, and craved the other’s touch and presence like a drug. He would have thrown the offer from Shao in the trash if it meant he could stay with Hermann and be with him in the way that he had dreamed of since that first letter.

Newt couldn’t, though, because he didn’t, and now he was paying the price.

He bit his lip hard and scowled at nothing in particular. His heart felt swollen and heavy, like it was filled with oil.

_You like him,_ the Precursors said neutrally. Newt scowled deeper. 

_Shut up,_ he thought, _You have no idea what you’re talking about_.

“Newton?” came Hermann’s voice. Newt looked up to see him staring at him concernedly. “Are you alright?”

Newt plastered on a fake smile. “Yeah. Just, uh, ruminating on the art. Answering a few questions about it. I’m fine.”

Hermann rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “You’re certainly giving them incorrect information; I’d be surprised if you knew anything about art history.”

“I know a hell of a lot about the Keith Haring!” Newt replied, pointing a finger at him across the table. “I was a punk kid in the nineties, dude, that was my shit! Hell, a gay punk kid in the nineties! In America!”

A small smile flitted across Hermann’s face. “I’m more concerned about the classical works.”

“Right, because I totally want to go into detail about all the old imperialist white guys who painted _those_. We saw the same Manifest Destiny themes, right?”

“This is a multinational art gallery, Newton.”

“Colonialism was not just an American problem, _Hermann_,” he said, replicating Hermann’s tone. “C’mon, let’s at least show them some greenspace for Christ’s sake. I don’t think I saw a single tree while in Shanghai.”

The smile went softer, somehow. “Alright,” Hermann said. “Central Park it is.”

They grabbed some sandwiches from a deli nearby and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering. Newt had an expansive knowledge of the various flora and fauna that resided in the park, and Hermann was oddly content to just listen to him talk. It was a strange contrast to the days where they would do nothing but scream over each other, desperate to be heard. Newt found he liked it quite a lot.

Eventually they sat down so Hermann could rest his leg, and Newt finished off the crusts of his sandwich. He tossed the crumbs left in the cellophane to a group of birds nearby, pointing out the different species that brazenly hopped around their feet. Hermann was still so quiet it was nearly alarming, but every time Newt glanced over he just looked content, as if the silence was perfectly natural. 

The sun set unevenly through the trees, throwing irregular patches of light on the ground as they walked the short way back to their hotel. This was the hour where couples could be seen strolling through the park together, and it hit Newt just how much he and Hermann fit in with them. If he ignored the constant presence in the back of his mind, he could almost pretend this was their honeymoon, that they had been planning their wedding since the day after the war ended, and this was a romantic evening together as husbands.

The pain in his chest returned at this thought, and he shook his head hard to clear it. Focus. He needed to stay focused on the plan.

Their hotel room was ready by the time they returned, and after planting their suitcases haphazardly around the room, Newt tumbled into one of the two beds while Hermann took a hot shower. He remained on his side facing away as the other man returned, knowing the sight of Hermann, damp and warm and sleepy, would keep him awake for hours on end.

“G’night,” he said softly after the rustling of Hermann’s sheets had ceased. There was a murmured response from the other side of the room, and Newt curled his legs up tighter to his chest and fisted the sheets.

In a better universe there would be one bed in this room, and the both of them would be in it. He would let Hermann wrap his long, bony arms around him like a starfish and hold him tight like the heat leech that he was. He would kiss Hermann good night and stroke the back of his hand as they fell asleep together, unafraid of any nightmares that might come.

But that wasn’t how things were, and Newt knew exactly why. 

The Precursors pitied him enough that night to give him a dreamless sleep. He still woke, exhausted, at dawn.


	3. The Secret

Vanessa Valentine arrived the next day in a flurry of Marc Jacob’s Daisy and three separate suitcases, each larger than either of Newt or Hermann’s bags. She greeted Hermann with an extraordinarily high-pitched squeal and immediately dropped her bags to rush forward and hug him (hug being a shaky definition of the action, as she more or less lifted him off the ground and turned his ribcage into a compact slinky).

Vanessa was tall, taller than either of them, with large dark eyes and large dark hair and biceps like a military general. Her eyebrows were absolutely perfect. Her belt was more stylish than all of the Precursors’ clothes combined. She smiled like she knew someone’s deepest, darkest secret and couldn’t wait to tell you. Newt wanted to hate her more than anything, and he found himself completely unable to. 

She was just too… bubbly? Shiny? Totally impossible for him to outdo? It was odd that, when they greeted each other, she and Hermann didn’t exchange so much as a peck on the cheek, but Newt assumed it was due to Hermann’s distaste for “public displays of affection”. He had certainly always been jumpy when Newt acted friendly anywhere outside of the lab.

Except for, well, when he took Newt’s hand in the Bone Slums. And held him after the first Drift. And hugged him in LOCCENT. But those were high-stress, totally outlying incidents. Useless in data gathering. Newt could never get a repeat performance of _that_.

When Vanessa first saw him, she eyed Newt up and down like he was a handbag she might consider buying. “Yeah, okay,” she mused, glancing over at Hermann. “Definitely cute. Kinda gerbil-like IRL, and the alien hivemind is a bit of a turn-off, but I’ll keep the shovel in the garage for now.”

Hermann’s eyes widened, and he knocked his cane against her skin with a glare. She didn’t even flinch, instead sticking out her surprisingly callused hand for Newt to shake. “Newt Geiszler. You would not fucking buh-lieve how much I’ve heard about you.”

Newt shook it cautiously as Hermann made a noise like an injured raccoon. He gave her a nervous smile. “Uh. Hey. Nice to meet you. My situation is, uh, kinda the opposite.”

“I know,” she said crisply. “You didn’t recognize my voice over the phone.”

He blinked in surprise. “You noticed that?”

“I’m a reporter, Gecko—”

“It’s Newt—”

“I know.” She smiled. “I notice things. It’s my job.”

Newt’s stomach dropped into his shoes. She knew. She totally, most definitely knew how he felt about Hermann. Mother_fuck_. 

“Uh,” he said for the third time in five minutes, “cool. Okay.”

She gave his hand a possibly threatening squeeze before turning to Hermann. “Noodle,” she said with the comfort of someone who had called him that for years, “have y’all grabbed snacks for the drive?”

“Uh,” Newt started to explain, “Hermann isn’t really a fan of nick—”

“It’s fine, Newton,” he interrupted, cutting him off. “I’ve learned to respond to just about anything with her.”

Vanessa grinned. “Is that a challenge? Can I call you pumpkin?”

“No.”

“Froggy?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Butterbean?”

“I will beat you with my cane if you say that again.”

“Doctor Hermann Gei—” she began slyly, but Hermann quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. His gaze darted nervously from Newt, to Vanessa, then back to Newt. 

“Food,” he said tightly, “we should get food. For the trip. Right now.”

Vanessa rolled her eyes and pushed his hand away with ease. “So _now_ you’re interested. Okay loser, there’s a bodega a block from here.”

Hermann gave her one last look and grabbed his cane from the bed before striding towards the door briskly. He turned back and nodded his head at Newt. “Well let’s go, then. Best not to keep the malicious alien race waiting.”

Newt was still looking at Vanessa, the scientist part of his brain whirring. Something was up. No-- something was _happening_. And those two were in on it.

_Wow,_ the Precursors said sarcastically, _we wonder what it could be._

With a start, he mentally kicked himself. _Of course_. They were dating for Christ’s sake. Obviously they had secrets and inside jokes he wasn’t privy to.

_Oh my God you evolutionary backstep._

_What?_

_We’re not saying anything. If you can’t figure this out on your own, there really is no hope for your species._

“Newt?” said Vanessa from the doorway, snapping him out of the conversation. “Are you coming?”

Newt shook his head to clear it. “Yeah,” he said as lightly as he could manage. “Let’s go find Hermann some dried prunes.”

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

If Newt was going to admit that anything about the past year had been slightly worse than annoying, he would confess that he hadn’t eaten junk food in a while.

The Precursors weren’t fans of most human functions to begin with, but eating had always seemed monotonous and unnecessarily complicated to them. Newt had picked up this mindset during the Kaiju war, but while this had led to him subsisting mainly on coffee and energy bars from the bottom of his desk drawer, the Precursors had taken the initiative to throw anything of nutritional value into a blender, add protein powder, and chug it like a closeted sophomore year fraternity bro at his first kegster.

It was disgusting as absolute fuck.

They never blended the mixture long enough, so it was always like swallowing a slightly dry, overly chunky, sickenly greenish-brown smoothie that, even in his ghostly state, Newt could tell gave his body shakes like nobody’s business. He could taste it without taste buds. The health of it was probably outweighed by the psychological damage wrecked on his mind. 

All this to say that, the moment he spotted a bag of salt and vinegar chips, Newt had to keep himself from breaking down right in the middle of the bodega.

“We’re getting the damn chips,” he muttered under his breath when his arm protested slightly. “I don’t give a shit about your health plan or your opinion on human bodily needs, I’m getting whatever the fuck I want here and you guys can learn something in the process.”

_Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,_ said the Precursors in a tone like a petulant fifteen year old. Newt grabbed the bag in response and shot a self-satisfied look at no one. 

Vanessa met him at the coolers, where she spent close to three minutes selecting which Arizona Iced Teas she wanted. At Newt’s look, she shrugged. “It’s about the ambiance,” she explained. “You have to soundtrack a moment not just with music, but with all your senses.”

“That’s kind of pretentious, dude.”

Vanessa blinked. “Duh,” she said in a tone that made Newt feel like an idiot. “What do you think this is based on?”

“Huh?”

She rolled her eyes. “Nevermind. Can I talk to them?”

Newt startled, and his eyes darted around nervously. “Uh. The Precursors?”

“No, genius, the other aliens in your head. Yeah, the Precursors.” She flipped the can of tea expertly with one hand. “They’re listening, right?”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t recommend it, man.”

Another flip. “Okay. Can I talk to them anyway?”

Newt sighed and glanced sideways. “Well? You guys got something to say?”

Immediately, he felt his mouth move. “_Hello Vanessa Valentine. You seem like the only marginally well-dressed person in this establishment._”

Vanessa put a hand to her chest and fluttered her eyelashes. “Well bless your heart! I know _I’ve_ gotta hand it to y’all; you somehow managed to make Newt look like more of try-hard then he already was. Kudos to you!”

“_To be perfectly honest, it really wasn’t that hard_.”

“I’m surprised y’all didn’t get rid of the glasses; they literally scream ‘shove me into a locker!’.”

“_Well we were going to get Lasik, but he canceled the appointment for this little adventure_.”

“Are you guys just gonna bond over bullying me?” Newt asked flatly.

“_That would make this experience a lot less mind-numbingly boring,_” the Precursors said. Vanessa snorted and handed off a few of her drinks to Newt so she could open the ice cooler.

“You guys haven’t been on a lot of genuine road trips, have y’all?” she said, hefting a bag onto her shoulder. “Hermann, Karla, and I all drove across Europe before we went to Uni and that shit was wild. I’ll be shocked if we get bored for too long.”

Juggling her cans of tea and his various “forbidden” snack foods, Newt followed Vanessa to the counter when something caught his eye. Hanging on a rack next to a cart of laughably old DVDs was a little keychain with a charm shaped like Lady Danger. He stared at it for a moment, then grabbed it with his free hand and continued walking.

Hermann was already placing a collection of travel soaps and bags of granola and dried fruit on the counter when Newt arrived in time to see Vanessa make a face at his choices. 

“Oh, fuck that,” she said firmly. “Hold on, I’m going back for candy.”

Without thinking, Newt blurted out, “Man, I haven’t had that in forever.”

Immediately, Hermann turned to look at him with a near-comical expression of horror. “Have they not been _feeding_ you, Newton?” he said accusingly. Newt stiffened, heat spreading across his face.

“What? Dude, no, they just don’t like a lot of sugar,” he replied quickly. “It’s fine, seriously, calm down.”

Hermann gave him a critical look. “Am I talking to Newton, or—”

“_Hermann_,” Newt held up his hands defensively. “I’m fine. I promise—it’s me. You don’t need to—it’s fine.”

Hermann looked as if he were about to press further, but Vanessa returned just in time with a large bag of assorted fun-sizes. “What’s Hermann worrying about now?” she asked amusedly.

“Nothing,” Newt said firmly, shoving everything on the counter towards the stoned-looking clerk. “I don’t think he’s gotten used to not having to predict the end of the world every few months.”

Beside him, Hermann went quiet, but Newt could tell he wasn’t convinced in the slightest.

They traipsed back to the hotel in long periods of uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by Vanessa and Newt chattering back and forth to fill the suspicious void. He avoided Hermann’s near-constant concerned glances, feeling them burn on his skin like a hot iron. 

The taxi they caught sputtered along the concrete bank of the Hudson, turning the muddy waters into a shaky line of brown and green and the slightest hint of blue. Newt stared out the window at the passing skyline and catalogued the buildings as they passed; thick and American and utterly different from the sleek, cold blacks of Shanghai. The bright grey was stark against the blue sky above them. Scattered along the riverbank were patches of scrubby trees just beginning to blossom in the early spring chill, their branches like curled fingers.

The day had seemed to be a series of summarized events, so Newt found himself surprised when, as Hermann left to pick up the car, Vanessa pulled him onto the bed next to her.

“So what exactly is going on?” she asked briskly. “I know you’re possessed by aliens, and I know what I overheard you and Hermann talking about on the phone, but do you, y’know, have a concrete plan here?”

“What are you talking about?” Newt said, a little offended. “My plan is super concrete.”

Vanessa blinked slowly, like an unimpressed cat. “Workshop with me here. We drive across America and show the Precursors the treasures and joys of humanity.”

“Correct.”

“And end on the West Coast.”

“Yeah.”

“And then what?”

“Uh,” said Newt, realizing in that moment that he, in fact, had no plan. “I guess we cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“And does Hermann know how loosey-goosey you’ve planned this ending?” Vanessa asked sarcastically. Newt was filled with the urge to punch her in the arm, and he wasn’t sure if that was the Precursors or him. Instead, he chose to frown.

“No, because it isn’t ‘loosy-goosey’, it’s realistic. We get to the coast, the Precursors are dazzled by our merit or whatever, and then…” He thought for a moment. “I guess I just live with them in my head forever until I die? Not the most appetizing option I’ve ever heard, but I could deal with it.”

“And you’re just gonna quit your job and go back to the PPDC with a bunch of genocidal aliens piggybacking off your mind? And hope beyond God or whatever that no one does a brain scan and figures you out? _And_ that the Precursors keep their word?”

“_We don’t have to worry about that, because your plan isn’t goning to work,_” the Precursors said matter-of-factly. “_Why plan for the future when it isn’t going to exist in a few months?_”

“You guys greatly overestimate how hard you can push my body,” Newt said. “Try a few years.”

“_Either way, you all fail. The only people who believe in this talent show of futility are you, the hot chick, and maybe Gottlieb. Maybe_.”

“Hey.” Vanessa patted his shoulder in an oddly sincere gesture of comfort. “Hermann believes in you. He’s just scared.”

Newt snorted. “Yeah, I would be too if the fate of the whole world was at stake.”

A bemused, almost sad smile crept across her face. “You don’t get it, do you?”

He blinked. “Get what?”

“Nevermind.” She let her shoulders rise and fall delicately. “I do think you should have a plan. I mean, how do you know this is even gonna work?”

Newt fiddled his bottom lip with his teeth, tapping his fingers on the bedspread. “I don’t,” he admitted. “But… I mean, Hermann and I saved the world once. Why can’t we do it again?”

“The circumstances were marginally different, Salamander.”

He rolled his eyes at the nickname. “So we adapt. We’re scientists. Easy peasy.”

Vanessa pushed herself off the bed and turned to give him another shrug. “Maybe so. You guys won a war, after all. What’s a little emotionally messy, world-saving road trip between friends?” She tossed one of her bags onto the bed. “Move, I need to turn the sheets down.”

It was at this time Newt realized he was going to face one of two scenarios that night: either Hermann and Vanessa would sleep together (y’know, like normal couples did), or, considering that this was Hermann Gottlieb, thirty eight time king of the Most Repressed Human award, he and Newt were going to have to… to…

“Oh, fuck,” Newt said aloud.


	4. Nothing to See Here

The Sunoco gas station was a welcome sight after driving three hours non stop through the thick, leafy wilderness of the Northeast. It appeared through a cluster of shivering firs, its half-crumpled roof covered in a coat of pine needles still green from winter. The concrete around the single pump in the lot had several large cracks running through it, and Vanessa barely avoided them as she pulled up. Trash littered the ground: cigarette butts, discarded beer cans, a Twix wrapper with the label barely visible through the grime. 

As Newt got out of the car he rubbed his arms, which were covered in goosebumps. “Geez,” he muttered, shivering slightly. “It’s goddamn cold for springtime.”

“That’s Pennsylvania for you,” said Vanessa, following him. “Autumns here? Gorgeous, but you won’t hear the end of winter ‘till June.” She scrubbed her hand over the dusty screen of the gas pump and wiped it on her jeans. “No numbers. I think it’s broken.”

Newt tapped on the car window. “Hermann,” he called, “pump’s broken. Do you wanna come in with us to find the owner?”

From behind the slightly tinted glass, Hermann sighed and moved to open the door as Newt stepped aside. He stretched his bad leg out when he stood, bending down slightly to rub at his knee where it was barely visible through his baggy slacks. Even on a road trip, important as it might have been, his clothes were still professional and demure. It was almost charming.

Vanessa was already heading for the building, and Hermann shot Newt a skeptical look. “I assume you can’t promise we aren’t in danger of being assaulted here?”

Newt pressed his lips together. “Y’know, I’m just gonna cross my fingers and hope my guardian angel wakes the fuck up from whatever coma they’ve been in for the past year.” He moved in front of Hermann anyway, although their height difference made the gesture slightly comical.

_If you get murdered, we’ll kill you,_ the Precursors hissed, but Newt could tell they were slightly put off by the atmosphere.

The store was empty when they pushed through the smeared glass door, and no employees sat at the counter. It looked like something out of a low-budget horror movie: widely scuffed floors, dust on most objects, and, aside from a few ominous clanks from the soda machine every now and then, a stifling layer of eerie quiet. The air smelled like a high school cafeteria on sloppy joe day, and the blasting heat only made the stench worse. 

_Are they raising iguanas in here or something?_

“Please, please shut up,” Newt muttered under his breath.

Vanessa moved out from behind one of the shelves of granola bars, starling Newt so bad he had to stifle a yelp. “I’m gonna check the bathrooms,” she said. “Be careful. This place is freaky as hell.”

She disappeared down the short hall to the bathroom, leaving Newt and Hermann alone and increasingly nervous. Newt scrambled for an action. “Uh,” he said, “maybe someone’s in the back room?”

He glanced around for a door that looked like it might lead there, and spotted one just next to the beer cave covered sloppily in peeling eggshell paint. Slowly, Hermann’s cane clacking loudly in the still air, they walked stiffly over and tried the door. Unlocked.

Newt opened it slowly, arm tense, and peered through the crack. The lights were on inside, harsh and fluorescent, and the room’s sparse furniture consisted of a small minifridge, a card table, and some folding chairs. There was a large man slumped in one of them, his thick, grey hoodie pulled low over his face. On a paper plate in front of him was what looked like a raw steak, ragged at the edges where he had pulled off chunks to shove into his hidden mouth. His fingernails were long and grimy, tips stained with nicotine, which was explained by the cigarette gently smoking in his free hand. He turned to look at them as the door opened, face deep in shadow.

“You robbers?” he said gruffly, not appearing to care if they were. Newt shook his head quickly.

“Uh, no. Uh. Sorry—” he stuttered, unable to tear his eyes away from the carnal-looking meat.   
“We, uh, we were trying to get gas? But the pump wouldn’t turn on.”

The Precursors were a shocked loop in Newt’s head. _What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck, that is fucking gross._

The man growled a curse under his breath and stood, chair creaking. He ran his messy hand over his pants leg, leaving smears of juice in big, dramatic streaks, and ambled to the door. “Fucker,” he said. “Does that every other damn day.”

The man led them outside, where he tapped the blank screen of the pump a few times as if to prove it was really broken. Then, swaying back on his feet, he slammed his shoulder into the body of the machine with a sickening thud, the metal clanging loudly. Hermann stiffened at the sound, and grabbed Newt’s wrist so tightly it almost hurt.

The man hit the pump again with his side, then slapped the screen hard for good measure. Where his shoulder had been was now a small dent in the metal, and both Newt and Hermann’s eyes widened when they saw it.

The screen flickered to life pathetically, and the man turned and rubbed his shoulder. “That should fix it,” he said. His voice had a strange, almost reverbic quality about it, as if he was speaking more than one language at once. Newt still couldn’t get a clear look at his face.

“Thank you,” Hermann said crisply, obviously trying to mask his alarm. He fished in his pocket for his debit card, slid it into the pay slot, then took the nozzle gingerly with as few fingers as possible. The man watched as he filled up the tank—or, at least, Newt assumed he did. The smoke from his cigarette trailed out of the darkness of his hoodie and into the air.

As Hermann returned the nozzle to its hook, Vanessa came walking quickly out of the building, face pale as deerskin. “Don’t go in the bathroom,” she began urgently, “it—” then stopped when she saw the man. Her eyes widened. 

He gave her a long, curious look. “Yeah,” he said slowly, “it needs a good cleaning. Sorry ‘bout that.”

Vanessa looked as if she both wanted to say something very, very badly, and also disappear into thin air. “It’s fine,” she finally replied tightly. “Don’t worry about it.”

Newt looked at Vanessa, then at Hermann, who was having a whole conversation with her using just his eyes, and finally at the man. He was leaning on the pump, relaxed as could be, twirling the cigarette in his gnarled fingers. “Right,” he said. “Cool. Thanks, man.”

“Appreciate the business,” the man said, not moving from his place. “Keep safe out there on those roads. All kinds of crazy folk in the middle of nowhere.”

Hermann gave him a nervous smile and quickly got into the car as quickly as his knee would allow him, Vanessa and Newt following close behind. Vanessa jammed the key in the ignition and peeled out of the lot as fast as she could, knuckles white around the steering wheel. Newt looked back to see the man turn and walk back towards the store, pushing back his hood slightly to scratch at his face. His breath caught.

The man’s cheeks were peppered with rough, dull scales that flaked when he scratched them. His mouth was large and cruel, and two thick, pointed teeth jutted down over his lips in an overbite. They were stained pink with juice from the steak, but looked as if they could tear apart a much larger animal with ease.

At this revelation, the Precursors were oddly silent. Newt looked over at Vanessa, who was pointedly staring ahead at the road. She glanced aside for just a moment and shook her head, then didn’t let up on the gas until they were out of the lot and back on the main road and miles and miles away.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

Durbin, West Virginia was four more hours of tense, uncomfortable driving, no one wanting to discuss what they had seen. It was just outside the Monongahela National Forest, bordered by a band of trees that encircled the tiny town easily. The homes were small and quaint, with a mix of chain link and white picket fences that clearly showed who had lived there the longest. Most of them had roughened paint in a town-wide palette of white, grey, and rusty brown. 

“Why do I get the feeling we’re the first people to pass through here in a while?” Newt said, staring out the window as they passed an ancient-looking Ralph’s. A mother was outside in the parking lot, loading groceries into her car as her teenage son hefted a carton of Gatorade into the back. She looked as worn and tired as his scruffily clipped buzzcut; dirty blonde and scraggly. They sort of matched the town.

Vanessa pulled up to a kichtsy diner called Station Two with a roughly-hewn wooden front in varying shades of deep brown. An air conditioner poked out of one of the two second floor windows, silent this time of year. A single car was parked in front, and there was the faint sound of music coming from inside.

“Google said this place has good pie,” said Vanessa by way of explanation. “And I need some palatable coffee if I’m gonna drive any further.”

Inside the walls were painted a bright scarlet and covered with various pictures and newspaper clippings. There were t-shirts hanging on one section, a flatscreen TV, and some nature paintings done by a local. A dreamcatcher hung from the ceiling. At the bar sat a group of old men drinking beer and talking, a half-eaten cherry pie between them. They looked up when Newt, Hermann, and Vanessa entered; obviously a punk, a black woman, and a man with a cane younger than sixty were uncommon around here. 

“Sit wherever you want, I’ll be there in a minute,” said the lady behind the counter. She was a grandmotherly figure with flossy ginger hair and warm brown eyes hiding among her plump cheeks, an apron pattered with kittens tied around her waist. She handed one of the men another beer, smiled at him pleasantly, then moved from behind the counter to follow the three to their seats. Hermann pulled out Vanessa’s chair for her, and Newt ducked his head to hide a scowl.

“Call me Anne,” the woman said, rolling back her shoulders with a series of light pops. “Drinks?”

“Coffee,” Vanessa said immediately, “brown sugar and milk, please. As strong as you can make it.”

“You folks traveling, then?” Anne asked, scribbling it down on her frayed notepad. Newt nodded.

“Road trip. She’s driving.”

“Whoever said women are the worse drivers clearly never met these two,” Vanessa teased, ribbing Newt with her elbow. Anne chuckled.

“Tell that to my husband and he’d debate you ‘till sunset. I crashed my Mama’s car two days after I got my license back in high school.” She laughed harder. “Damn near blew her top.” Turning to Hermann, she asked, “For you, sweetheart?”

“Water, please,” he said politely. Privately, Newt rolled his eyes.

“I’ll have a Coke,” he added. 

_No._

Newt kicked his own calf under the table and gave Anne a big smile. “Thanks.”

Anne puttered away back towards the bar, and Newt rubbed at the throbbing area with his foot. _Fuck off,_, he thought waspishly. _My body now, my food._

_We want a salad,_ the Precursors insisted, and Newt’s brow furrowed deeper.

“I am getting a burger, and you’re gonna shut up and let me eat it,” he snapped aloud, drawing concerned looks from Hermann and Vanessa. Hermann put a worried hand on his arm. 

“Newton? Are you alright?” he asked. Newt huffed frustratedly.

“These guys are about as boring as you when it comes to food. Make sure I order a bacon cheeseburger when Anne comes back, okay?”

Hermann glared at Newt’s forehead, as if the Precursors were sitting just inside Newt’s skull and causing all this trouble. “Of course. They ought to leave you alone if they know what’s good for them.”

The mental image of a tiny Hermann beating the Precursors’ hooves with his cane made Newt almost laugh. “Thanks, Herm,” he said choosing to ignore how his arm burned where he had touched it. 

When Anne returned with their drinks, Newt ordered his burger without any resistance, but Hermann’s fierce gaze was on him the whole time. The Precursors crossed their arms (multiple to each) and pouted, especially when they were informed of the side of fries that came with it. 

Their food came after a rough estimate of about half an hour.

A different waitress brought it to them; a young woman with short, honey-blonde hair in a choppy bob and warm brown eyes. She set the plates down on the table with practiced ease, but fumbled when she looked closer at Newt and Hermann.

“Holy Jesus,” she blurted. “You two are— oh my God.”

Vanessa snorted in an attempt to hide her laugh, nudging Hermann under the table. He shot her a glare and turned pink.

“Oh my God,” the woman said again. “Dr. Gottlieb. And Dr. Geiszler. Y’all are—uh. Wow.” She pulled her notepad out of her apron and snatched the pen behind her ear. “Uh. Could I get y’all’s autograph, if that’s alright?”

For a brief moment, Newt completely forgot about the Precursors, and the mission, and the menagerie of suckiness currently going on in his head. He flushed to the tips of his toes, face splitting into a grin. “Seriously? Sure, dude!”

Hermann rolled his eyes peevishly, but Newt ignored him and grabbed the pen. He scribbled his infamously large and illegible signature on the paper, then passed it to Hermann. With a sigh and a glance at the awestruck waitress, he signed as well. 

_Well fucking look at that,_ Newt thought smugly. _I’m a rockstar all on my own_.

_Whatever. If you consider a backwater waitress asking you to sign her notepad being a “rockstar”,_ the Precursors snapped.

As Hermann handed the pad back to her, the waitress gushed, “Thank y’all so much; I’m a huge fan of your work. Especially the joint stuff you wrote after the war on the Kaiju Drift. When the article got published, I skipped my bio lab to read the whole thing.”

“You’re a STEM student?” Newt asked eagerly. She nodded.

“At PU; I’m majoring in bioengineering. Tibby Julian,” she said, grabbing Newt’s hand and pumping it furiously. “Great to meet y’all!”

“Likewise,” said Hermann politely, cheeks still dark. “Congratulations on an excellent choice of study.”

Tibby smiled even wider. “Oh geez, thank you! I gotta ask, though,” she put a hand on her cocked hip, “what on Earth are y’all doing out in the middle of the Monongahela? Not really a place you’d expect to find celebrities.”

“Oh I don’t know about that—” Hermann started, but stopped himself. He blinked, then looked at Newt nervously. Newt realized it around the same time as he did: they hadn’t actually come up with a cover story for their road trip.

“Uh…” he said dumbly, fumbling for an answer. Vanessa came to his rescue.

“They’re on their honeymoon!” she said quickly. “I’m here to chaperone and make sure they don’t crash my car.”

Newt and Hermann froze in their seats. “Honeymoon?!” Hermann’s face screamed.

_Honeymoon?!_ Newt thought frantically. The Precursors roared with laughter.

“Ah,” Hermann said in a strained voice, “yes. We are. On that. Together.”

Tibby’s jaw dropped open. “Y’all are married? Well goddamn, doctors, congratulations!” She chuckled to herself in amazement. “Drift partners and life ones, too? That’s a tale for the romance section. Gotta say, though, I ain’t surprised.”

“How come?” Newt said before he could stop himself. Tibby smiled at him.

“The press junkets,” she explained. “Either y’all were _real_ good friends, or one helluva wartime romance. Most of my roomates guessed the latter.”

“Well they sure were right on the nose!” Vanessa chirped. “I’ve had to put one in the backseat so these two lovebugs could keep their hands off each other.” Hermann looked like he wanted to either punch her in the face, or sink into the floor.

“Really though,” said Tibby, “your honeymoon is in West Virginia? Bit uncommon if you ask me.” 

Hermann cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well, you know what they say. You can take the man away from his biology, but he’ll just make your honeymoon a camping trip and refuse to stop collecting every insect that flies in his face.”

Tibby laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. Some of us just need to run wild no matter what.”

Before leaving, she snapped a quick picture with them, Vanessa insisting on finding the perfect light. On the way out to the car, Newt hissed at her, “Why the absolute _shit_ did you tell her Hermann and I are married?”

Vanessa shrugged. “We needed a cover story. Besides, you two are basically an old married couple anyway. Might as well typecast.”

_Some girlfriend,_ Newt thought, pointedly keeping his eyes away from Hermann’s as he climbed into the driver’s seat. He had obviously been uncomfortable about the whole experience. Best not to make things worse.


	5. Queen City

_You’re in a ramen restaurant just outside of OTR in a slightly shady area with a beautiful boy (and also his probable girlfriend) and you won’t tell him that you love him but you love him, and it feels like you’ve done something terrible like accidentally let an entire malicious alien race into your head through mind melding with their corpse to save the world, and you’re tired, and also annoyed at said alien race in your brain._

_We will literally pay you to just shut up and mate with him_.

As Newt had to grip the edge of the artfully-worn wooden table to keep from spitting out his soda in mortified surprise, despite the fact that nobody could hear the Precursors but him, he pondered what small country’s worth of puppies he had kicked in a past life to get him to where he was now: watching the love of his life bemusedly catching oyster crackers in his mouth, thrown by a drop-dead-gorgeous model, while he watched pathetically from the other side of the table and debated whether or not either of them would notice if he just walked outside and sashayed right into the fucking--

_Snap!_

Newt looked down and blinked. He had pulled his chopsticks apart so hard they had snapped in half unevenly, and now there was a near-certainty that he would get splinters if he used them. He blinked again.

_Oh my God. Are you about to cry?_ the Precursors sneered.

Was he about to cry? Newt decided it was time to take stock.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

If Newt really wanted to pinpoint when this whole situation started to roll rapidly downhill, it had probably started when he and Hermann didn’t really put an end to the whole “sharing a bed” thing.

In his defense, it was logical. Hermann was a gentleman of the (endearingly) Victorian sort, and Newt had never expected him to sleep with Vanessa, even if they were, y’know, sleeping together, which they probably were. Newt wasn’t going to bunk up with her (and only slightly out of fear for his health, safety, and general wellbeing), so it fell to him and Hermann to either 1. have one of them sleep on the floor, and Newt wasn’t going to allow Hermann to fuck his leg up like that, despite Hermann insisting that he was fine, really Newton, he didn’t mind, 2. rent an entirely separate room and waste time and money, the former of which they didn’t really have, or 3. give Vanessa her own bed and share the other Full. 

Newt and Hermann were both men of logic. They shared the bed.

The issue with this was, however, that Newt was a restless sleeper, and that led to him waking up in the middle of the night nine times out of ten. It was on one of these nights that he awoke to Hermann’s warm breath on the top of his head, his gangly limbs curled around him, and a horribly tantalizing feeling of comfort and safety that was ruined the moment he realized this wasn’t (yet another) really good dream. 

Hermann had shown no signs of knowing about this, and Newt always woke in the morning to him back on the other side, but these strange, hazy moments of intimacy haunted him even when he was awake. It was nothing more than basic biology, of course. Hermann ran cold, and Newt ran hot, so it was only natural for the bonier man to gravitate towards a source of warmth when the motel air conditioning made things chilly. If Hermann knew, he would certainly be embarrassed, but wouldn’t think anything of it besides that.

Newt, on the other hand, was starting to look forward to it, and that was an extremely bad thing.

Look, was he touch-starved? Absolutely. Yes times a hundred. And were these little nocturnal cuddle-fests the mental equivalent of snorting straight up silver cocaine? More than likely (Newt had never done anything stronger than weed). But it wasn’t fair to Hermann, who didn’t know what he was doing, and certainly wouldn’t want to if he were awake. The decent thing to do was just to keep quiet and not make a big deal out of the whole thing. Because it wasn’t. A big deal. Just two guys sharing a bed on a roadtrip to save the world from genocidal aliens with the personality equivalent of Sharpay Evans from High School Musical. Super duper normal.

Newt hated his life so much it was unreal.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

That brought things right back to the situation at hand, where Newt stared blankly down at his lily white knuckles and tried insanely fucking hard to not cry over a pair of unevenly broken chopsticks. Was this seriously the proverbial straw breaking his camel’s back right now? Fucking chopsticks? Really?

Newt clenched his jaw so hard it hurt and tried to will away the ache in his chest. God, he was fucking _tired_, and the foreplay in front of him was really the cherry on top. 

A light touch on his wrist startled him back to reality, and he looked up to see Hermann looking at him worriedly. 

“Newton?” he asked softly. “Are you alright?”

“Uh,” said Newt dumbly, trying to find a group of words he could say without his voice breaking. “Sorry. My, uh, my chopsticks…” he trailed off, unsure of how to finish. 

Hermann’s brow creased deeper for a moment as he glanced at Newt’s hands. Then, he gave him a tiny smile.

“Here,” he said gently, “use mine.” 

He took the splintered chopsticks from where they were gripped weakly in Newt’s hands and set them down on the table between them, skin brushing skin, like fire on dry ice. Hermann’s own were still in their wrapping, and he removed them and neatly broke them in half. Newt’s fingers burned. He didn’t have any splinters.

Skin-warmed wood. The smell of fragrant broth and roasted chicken. Conversation humming from the tables around them. Newt took the chopsticks and reached back into his jumbled, pencil-scrawl of a brain for how to use them. He picked up a few noodles and put them neatly into his mouth, the whole time watching Hermann watching him intently, looking at Newt eating as if it were a victory. Newt realized suddenly that perhaps it was, this sign of choice and care; Hermann blinked slowly, lashes shadows in the dingy, gentrified lamplight, and his eyes said “I want you to eat well” and his eyes said “I’ll take care of you if only you would let me” and Newt tried to keep his own from saying “I love you” too loudly back.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

Washington Park was full of drunk people (due to the fact that it was 9pm on a Friday night in Cincinnati, Ohio), and it was decided among the group that they had the right idea. Across the street was a hulking, bricklaid building called Rhinegeist Brewery, with craft beers made behind the bars in massive steel kegs. The floor was littered with peanut shells and bean bags from the cornhole games being played in the open spaces. A pop song Newt didn’t recognize was playing loudly from unseen speakers. This was relatively close to the polar opposite of every bar he’d been in for the past year.

It was honestly a welcome change from neon drinks, glowing bar tops, and sleazy businessmen too rich to bother hiding how much of an asshole they were. When Vanessa recognized the song, she brightened.

“Oh! Carly Rae Jepsen! I love this song.”

Newt felt at home already.

Vanessa threw her arms around both of their shoulders. “Okay, boys, here’s the plan: I’m DD tonight and not interested in driving with a hangover tomorrow, so you two kiddos have fun! Let me know when one of you does something stupider than usual, and we can go.” She gave Hermann a friendly pat on the head. “Newt, don’t work yourself ragged trying to pull Hermann’s stick out of his ass. He’s a lightweight.” She winked.

The moment Vanessa left them alone, Hermann let out a sigh. “I’m sorry about her,” he said with a hint of fondness, “Vanessa’s a bit of an… acquired taste.”

Newt shrugged. “I mean, she’s cool. And funny. Just, y’know. I can tell she’s a lot for someone like you.” At Hermann’s questioning look, he explained. “You’re like, the most introverted introvert to ever eat books, dude. Vanessa seems like the kind of person who dances on tables stone-cold sober. I’m honestly surprised you’re… close.”

Hermann glanced in the direction she had left and smiled. “Well. Growing up wasn’t easy for either of us. At first it just seemed prudent to band together for, if you’ll excuse my dramatism, survival, but I suppose if you survive enough with a person, no matter how different they are, you can’t help but become friends.”

Newt had to stop himself from saying, _Sounds kind of like us_. Instead, he swallowed down a surge of jealousy. “You want to get a drink?”

Hermann gave the bar a nervous look, and made a very British sort of motion with his jaw. “If I must.”

They picked their way over to one of the glossy wooden rectangles set throughout the room, and each ordered a pint of what was brewing in the keg within that particular bar’s honey-colored walls. Hermann ran his finger along the edge of the glass, obviously feeling out of place.

“You feeling okay about the trip so far?” Newt asked awkwardly, trying to fill the space between them. Hermann worked his jaw again.

“I don’t exactly know how much progress has been made, considering the Precursors are in _your_ head, but it’s too soon to tell. I imagine they’re quite happy to be _here_, though.”

Newt chuckled. “Actually, this place is more my style. They were all into the sort of bars that look like a cross between a space station and a Batman villain’s secret hideout. Little less ‘Honky Tonk Ohio-style’, and more ‘founded by Tom from Parks and Rec’.”

Hermann actually smiled at the joke, and Newt remembered he probably had all of his knowledge of pop culture now. Or, at least, more than had been absorbed through general conversation in the lab back during the war. He had found himself missing those days more and more over the past year: just the two of them, stressed and scared of what was to come, yes, but with far less… distance between them. Even with the absence of the dividing line, now. Chalk dust on everything, lunches shared on the lab couch with their trays balanced on their knees, little notes on the chalkboards or fridges to remember medication, food, a deep breath now and then. Paradise in the apocalypse. Newt would have given anything for another disaster like that.

_That fucking does it_.

Newt blinked in alarm at the Precursors’ words. He glanced aside at no one. Before he could ask what they meant, a tingling sensation slithered up his arms and down his legs, leaving a coldly familiar sense of numbness in its wake. Newt’s heart plummeted into his shoes.

_No_, he tried to think, _no, no, no, don’t you dare-_, but there was no stopping them. With far less dramaticism than the previous time, Newt felt his grip on his body being peeled off like fingers from a ledge. He scrambled, slipped, then tumbled out into the liminal space next to himself. The expression on his face didn’t change.

“Y’know, it’s funny,” the Precursors said, slipping into the imitation of him they had perfected over the past year. “This whole situation, w- I mean.”

Hermann cocked his head about four degrees to the right. “How so?”

They smiled in a way that was just crooked enough to be charming. “You and me. Saving the world again. Not exactly in the same circumstances, but with about the same odds. Kinda takes you back to the good old days, huh?”

Hermann gave them a look. “I wouldn’t classify a brutal war against the Kaiju as exactly ‘good’.”

“You know what I mean,” they said. “When it was just us in that lab, fighting, sure, but… I dunno. What we had was sort of…” They paused deliberately (or at least Newt could tell it was deliberate). “Different. Special.”

A strip of color flashed across Hermann’s cheeks. “I- I’m not sure what you mean.”

The Precursors leaned forward slightly. “Really? Big brain like that? I find that kinda hard to believe.”

With growing horror, Newt realized the Precursors’ hand was creeping across the bartop towards Hermann’s. Anxiety exploded in his chest. He clenched his hands into fists, gathered momentum, and slammed into himself, pushing and pushing to try and regain entry into his mind. The Precursors’ expression faltered slightly, but they kept their sly smile glued on.

_You’ll thank us for this_, they said breezily.

_No!_ Newt screamed soundlessly, straining against their barrier. _You don’t get to do this! It isn’t your fucking choice to make!_

Their smile thinned somewhat. “Hermann,” the Precursors began, voice tighter than before, “think about it.”

Newt dug his fingers into the marrow of his brain and pushed harder. The wall between his mind and body bulged forward, thinning, and Newt shoved his shoulder in with all of his might. These were his feelings, this was his story, and they didn’t get to take this away from him. Hermann wasn’t theirs. He never was, and Newt wasn’t going to let that change. 

With a final cry of fury he threw his entire weight behind his shoulder, and the barrier snapped in two. Newt stumbled forward back into his mind and shoved the Precursors out, scrambling to reorient himself at the controls. The smile on his face disappeared, replaced by a look of blind panic, and Newt gasped seemingly out of nowhere. Instantly, Hermann seemed to realize what had happened.

“Newton,” he said quickly, shooting out a hand to clutch at his arm, “are you alright? Was that them? What did they do?”

Newt felt like he was going to vomit right there on Hermann’s two-tone wingtip oxfords. He struggled to breathe. “I-” he tried, throat betraying him, “I can’t-” His skin felt like someone had rubbed hot pepper into it after a sunburn. It was like his entire body was in rebellion.

“Newton, talk to me,” Hermann insisted, and Newt wanted to scream in frustration. How the hell was he supposed to get any words out when it was hard to even breathe? “Newton-” Hermann began again, but Newt jerked his arm away.

“Just- shut- stop!” he snapped. “I can’t- I just need to-” Hermann reached for him again, and Newt flinched away from the motion on instinct. “Don’t fucking touch me, God!”

Hurt flashed over Hermann’s face, and Newt instantly wanted to take it back. His instincts took over and he stumbled a few steps away, paused, then bolted for the door.

The night air hit him like a slap in the face when he finally found an exit and burst outside. It let out into an alleyway between the bar and the next building, and he threw himself up against a wall and shoved a fist in his mouth to muffle his gasps.

“Shit. Shit. Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit!”

The sounds of the city pressed down on him like an iron maiden, and he hunched his shoulders up to his ears as if to make himself smaller. His ears buzzed. He could barely hear himself think, much less what the Precursors were saying. Everything was too bright and too loud and pelting him with bullets of sensation that clawed at his brain, ripping his thoughts to shreds.

Newt bit down on his fist, hard, the shock of pain making things clear for a moment. He regretted it a moment later and wrenched it out of his mouth, shaking off the sting. “Fuck!”

Stupid. He was so _fucking_ stupid. Why had he let his guard down? Hell, why had he allowed it around Hermann? He should have known things would come crashing the moment he stopped to take a breath, and now he was paying the price for his oxygen. Stupid. Stupid. Fucking _pathetic_.

Newt didn’t even want to imagine how ruined things were now, especially as the look on Hermann’s face played on a loop in his mind. He felt so sick he wanted to slide down the wall and collapse. Hermann was going to leave, and their trip was going to fail, and the world would end and it would be his fault, because it was always his fault; this whole fucking nightmare was all his fault. If he had just held off the Precursors longer, or found some other way to get rid of them, or hell, even gone to that stupid PPDC checkup right after the Drift, or- or-

The door to his left opened, and someone stepped out next to him into the alley. Newt tensed his shoulders and tried to look like someone who had just had too much to drink.

“Newt?” Vanessa said worriedly. “Hey, hey, what happened?”

He was going to climb up that fire escape and backflip off the fucking brewery roof.

Vanessa hurried over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said, “it’s okay bud, just breathe, alright? You’re gonna be fine, but you’re still a human being who needs oxygen, so you gotta breathe. Just take deep breaths. It’s gonna be okay. You’re okay.”

Her words went in one ear and out the other, but Newt still forced himself to get a handle on his breathing and bring things back down to a semi-manageable pace. He dug his fingernails into his palms, feeling a sharp sting as they broke the skin, and sucked in air through his nose as he grit his teeth. Everything was okay and he was fine. Everything was okay and he was fine. Everything was okay and he was fine.

Funnily enough, that was the biggest lie he had told in a while.

Vanessa jumped back into his awareness as she rubbed circles on his back. “There you go. Take it easy. Don’t let those bastards come back, just stay in the moment and focus. In and out for three.”

Rather than being calming at all, her words just made Newt feel worse. So this is what things had come to, he mused. Nearly confessing to the man you love, freaking him out because of it, and having to let his girlfriend comfort you during a panic attack. What a highlight of an absolutely miserable karmic asskicking.

He blinked back hot tears from the corners of his eyes and repeated the mantra again. Everything was okay and he was fine. It still sounded fake in his mind.

The Precursors were silent, and Newt counted that as a small blessing. Numbly, without really taking in much around him, he straightened and let out a deep breath.

“I’m okay,” he said hollowly. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Thanks.”

Vanessa gave him a look of horribly genuine concern. “Are you sure? Nobody’s mad at you, Newt. It wasn’t your fault.”

No, Newt decided. _That_ was the biggest lie of the entire year.


	6. Paddlewheel

Newt was thankful for his lack of a hangover the next day, but when the memories of the last night rushed back at him a few seconds after he awoke, he would have preferred a headache and vomiting.

Hermann was up already, probably getting breakfast down in the lobby while Vanessa dressed in the bathroom. He could hear her music playing from underneath the blankets, bubblegum pop echoing off the cheap tiled walls. Newt shoved a pillow over his head and groaned. He was _so_ fucked thanks to last night.

_You could always fake that hangover_, the Precursors suggested. Newt kicked at his foot.

“You assholes are the reason things went so pear-shaped in the first place. Shut the fuck up,” he grumbled, voice hoarse from sleep.

“Newt? Are you up?” Vanessa shouted over the music. Newt wanted to scream, but he pulled the pillow off his head and flopped onto his back.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’m awake. Hermann out?”

“Breakfast,” she said. “Poor guy’s hungover as shit. You okay?”

Hermann was hungover? Had he been drinking more after Newt ran off? They had met back at the hotel separately, and Newt’s panic attack had put him out like a light before Hermann had returned. The thought of him having to drink to forget about how awful the experience had been sent a wave of nausea rolling through Newt’s stomach. He felt like gum on the back of someone’s shoe. “Oh,” he said simply. “Uh. I’m okay.”

Vanessa poked her head into the main area, curls halfway dry. She gave him an encouraging grin. “Hey, here’s some good news: guess what we’re doing after the drive to Missouri?”

“Festering in the navel of America?” Newt said sarcastically to the ceiling. Vanessa hit him squarely with a cotton ball.

“_No_, guess.”

“I don’t fucking- what?”

She stuck out her tongue. “Fine, be an asshole. You’ll find out when we get there.” With that she returned to the bathroom and began sing-humming along to the music, which Newt took as his cue to find breakfast himself.

Down in the lobby, Newt spotted Hermann sitting alone at a table set up in the corner. He was picking at a bland-looking bowl of oatmeal and slowly sipping his paper cup of tea, but looked up when Newt slid into a seat across him. There were dark bruises under his eyes. “Oh! Newton. Are you feeling better?”

Newt glanced down at the cheap plastic tabletop. “Uh, yeah. Fine. Thanks.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, then looked up at Hermann to gage his reaction; he looked as nervous as Newt. “Ah,” he said hesitantly. “Newton. About last night-”

“Forget about it,” Newt said quickly. “It- it doesn’t have to mean anything, okay? They were being…” he pretended to search for the right word in order to plan the lie out further, “assholes. Don’t listen to ‘em.”

Hermann blinked. “So… everything they said… that was all the Precursors? None of it was you?”

Unable to believe his luck, Newt let out a relieved laugh that Hermann must have taken for amused. “I, uh, yeah! Yeah, of course, dude! No, uh, that was all them, don’t worry about it.” He grinned widely without it reaching his eyes. “Probably part of their evil master plan to drive us apart or whatever.”

Hermann’s expression was unreadable, but something shifted in his eyes. “Ah. I see.”

Newt laughed again for good measure. “Don’t listen to anything they say, dude,” he said. “_Anything_.”

_You are digging your way to China at the speed of light_.

Newt stopped himself from muttering “Shut the fuck up,” just in time. Instead, he searched Hermann’s face for any sign of suspicion, but couldn’t get a read on anything. Hermann just looked at him a moment longer, then returned to stirring raisins into his oatmeal. 

“I’m sorry, then,” he said flatly, “for the way I acted last night. It was uncalled for, and I shouldn’t have left you when you needed me.”

The back of Newt’s neck burned, and he scratched at it awkwardly, not quite knowing what to say. “It’s fine, man, don’t worry about it.”

“No,” Hermann started to insist, “I-” He stopped himself. Stirred his oatmeal a little more. “I’m your friend, Newton. Friends help each other. Forgive me if I’d like to start making up for lost time.”

Newt could practically feel the weight behind that statement, but something caught in his throat as he tried to respond. He nodded jerkily, limbs feeling like puppet pieces. “Uh. Right. I’m gonna…” he trailed off, pushing his seat away and standing. “Right.”

As he spooned batter into the waffle maker, it took everything Newt had to not look behind him. Something niggling at the back of his mind told him Hermann was staring; not the Precursors, but that little voice he rarely ignored living deep within his gut. It had saved his ass countless times, but now Newt shook his head to clear it and focused on sprinkling in chocolate chips. He was gonna make this awkward, or worse, or jeopardize the mission in any more ways. His feelings didn’t matter here.

_You’ve been hanging around Gottlieb too much already_, the Precursors said. Newt frowned silently.

_No_, he thought, _that lesson was all from you guys_. They didn’t say anything after that.

The group headed out shortly afterwards, making the six hour drive to Hannibal, Missouri. Hermann had never read anything by Mark Twain, and Newt wasn’t interested in hearing an audiobook narrator spew racial slurs for fourteen hours, so the reasoning for Vanessa’s choice of location wasn’t quite clear. When they arrived, however, she pulled up to the Mark Twain Boyhood home, dug a sharpie out of her purse, and made a beeline for the restrooms.

They were unisex (surprising for a place this far south), so Newt and Hermann followed her in curiously. Vanessa selected a stall door and uncapped the pen, hovering the tip over the door for a moment before writing “SUCK MY BLACK BALLS YOU LIMP-DICKED SALTINE” in large block letters. When Newt saw the whole message, he burst out laughing.

“Holy _shit_ Vanessa, that’s awesome!”

Hermann appeared to be at war between a desire to prevent illegal activities and their possible arrest, and the knowledge that a) Vanessa wasn’t exactly… incorrect in her insult, and b) there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop her. She smiled pleasantly.

“God, I’ve always wanted to do that. They made us read his whole collection in Lit 101 because it was college in fucking _Georgia_, and I wanted to eat glass the whole time. Like, y’all ever heard of Toni Morrison? No? Not surprised!” She capped the pen with a satisfying click, then tossed her hair back primly. “Right. Okay! I saw a soup calendar in one of the shop windows, and I’d kill both of you for some French Onion. Who’s hungry?”

_What the hell is “French Onion soup”?_ the Precursors asked. Newt grinned.

“Oh man, I’m about to blow all two billion of you guys’ minds.”

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

“Hey guys,” said Vanessa, large latte in one hand, the other on her jutted-out hip, “how do we feel about a ghost tour?”

Newt’s head snapped around so fast an onlooker might’ve assumed he was possessed. “Yes,” he said quickly, “yes, yes, ghost tour, let’s do the ghost tour.”

Hermann made a face like he had just smelled something sour. “Oh, must we?”

“Shut up, Hermann, we absolutely fucking must.” Newt glanced into the window of the general store the tour flyer was pasted on. “D’you think they have frequency sensors in here? I might be able to rig up an EMT machine if we have a few hours-”

“You are under no circumstances bringing a hack-job device into a professional-”

“Oh _now_ you think it’s professional,” Newt said, spinning on one foot to face Hermann. “Okay, well if you haven’t noticed, Hermann, I’m not too shabby at building ‘hack job’ machines that actually work! Ring any bells? Hmm?”

Hermann rolled his eyes. “Yes, we are, as you can see, currently dealing with the repercussions of that talent.”

“It’s a skill. I practiced it,” Newt said peevishly. Hermann had a response less than a moment later.

“Are you honestly debating me on the nomenclature that should be used for-”

“You’re the one who always needs to be exactly right about-”

“Yes I do, Newton!” Hermann shouted, far louder than either of them had been previously. Newt’s mouth snapped shut in surprise. “I do, in fact, need to be right, because my being wrong didn’t stop putting people in danger in 2025! You, this- this entire situation is proof of that!”

Newt didn’t know what to say; the air around them had changed so fast he could barely think. He stood frozen, watching as Hermann’s chest rose and fell rapidly and his knuckles went white around his cane. Vanessa was still the third point in their triangle, staring at the both of them with wide eyes. She looked at Hermann, then back at Newt, as if she knew something neither of them did. Another few seconds passed; Hermann obviously trying to get a grip on himself. He pressed his lips together, hard.

Vanessa took a step forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hermann,” she said, gently but firmly. “It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry,” he said in a strained voice, “I’m not-”

“It’s okay,” she said again. “Milan, remember? Just like Milan.”

His lips thinned more. “Yes. Milan.” The tiniest amount of tension seeped out of Hermann’s frame, which suddenly looked remarkably frail and tired. Newt felt the urge to gather him in his arms like a knight saving a princess. That was weird. Wasn’t this whole thing supposed to be about saving him? The world? It didn’t matter. He took a step forward and took Hermann’s free hand loosely. 

“Hermann,” he said quietly. “I _am_ sorry. I know this whole thing kind of sucks.”

Hermann shook his head. “No, Newton. Not to me. Not if it’s you.” Newt didn’t really know what to say to that.

Hermann rolled back his shoulders and shifted where his cane held his weight. “Right. Yes. Nevermind. Forgive me; we can certainly go on the ghost tour if that’s what you’d like.”

Newt frowned and shrank back ever so slightly. “I- I don’t want you to feel like you have to-”

“Newton.” Hermann said his name so softly he almost didn’t hear it. “Do you really think, after everything that’s happened, I wouldn’t want to give you what I can?” He smiled in a way that seemed almost genuine, if not for the lines it made stark around his eyes. “It’s a bloody trek through some graves for an hour. At worst I’ll get a bit cold.”

His hand felt oddly hot when in Newt’s, despite Hermann’s near-constant chill. “You can have my jacket, then,” Newt murmured. He unconsciously licked his bottom lip.

They let go of each others’ hands at the same time, glancing down before jerking and looking away. Newt pulled his into a fist. “Better go, then. Sign says the next one’s in fifteen.”

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

They had found no ghouls, they had found no goblins, and they had seen not one single whiff of a spirit, but putting aside all of that, Newt was having a grand old time.

The graveyard bracketing Hannibal was, admittedly, rife with starving mosquitos and squishy mud, and Hermann had been liberal in his complaints about how cock-and-bull the entire concept was, but he seemed more bemused than truly annoyed. Newt half-paid attention to the stories of various Civil War veterans and their paint by numbers war crimes, instead choosing to kneel down next to the grave of a former slave marked only by the word, “Cora”. 

“Y’think her version of heaven is those guys’ hell?” he wondered aloud. “Like, she gets to play whack-a-mole with a sledgehammer while drinking piña coladas in between, and they’re just popping up and down for the rest of eternity.”

“As always, your tact and reverence for the dead is astounding,” Hermann said dryly. After a moment, however, he added, “Besides, I doubt she’d ever want to see those people again.”

Newt sprung to his feet in a single, smooth motion. He dusted his hands on his jeans, looking around. “Where’s Vanessa? I swear I saw her just a second ago.”

Hermanns eyes widened. “Oh dear.”

They picked their way through the group, unable to see the beacon of Vanessa’s cloud of dark hair. Newt noticed a copse of trees a few yards deeper into the cemetery, and he pointed. “Let’s check there.”

Hermann nodded, and they passed through the rows of graves to enter into the small patch of forest. It was even darker here than in the open evening air, leaves rustling softly in the breeze. The moon was obscured overhead, and the smell of new plants and flowers was so thick and cloying it was almost burdensome. It was like a fairy world, or a scene from _The VVitch_. Newt looked around a little warily. “Dude. This is seriously creepy.”

“Apophenia,” Hermann said in a clipped voice, but Newt could tell he was also unnerved by the sudden shadows. He tried to peer through the trees, but it was hard to see anything past a point. Newt noticed he was gripping his cane tighter.

There was a sudden whoosh behind them, and they both spun around quickly, hearts beating quickly. Nothing. Trees and darkness. The wind in the branches.

Then, a twig snapped from what sounded like only a few feet away. Newt turned towards the sound, eyes straining as he tried to discern the source. There was that same solid black, slight movement from the forest, and then-

Two electric blue pinpricks gazed back from the shadows.

“What the _fuck_!” Newt yelped, stumbling backwards into Hermann. Hermann caught him just in time to keep them both from falling, glancing around wildly.

“What?” he said frantically, “what is it?”

“Jesus, shit!” Newt pointed at the space where he had seen (there was no other explanation in his mind at the moment) the eyes glaring back at him. Nothing stared back. His heart rate descending slightly back to normal, he blinked.

“I…” he said helplessly. “It was right there. _Right_ there. I swear.”

Hermann looked at him, still breathing hard. “What did you see?”

Newt closed his mouth, opened it, then closed it again. It felt stupid to say now, especially with how disdainful Hermann had been towards the concept of ghosts. He shook his head.

“Uh, probably nothing. Just an animal with nocturnal vision having its eyes reflected. I think the whole atmosphere just got to me.”

Hermann visibly sighed with relief, collecting himself and standing up straighter. “Well then. Good. Plenty of raccoons and bears and whatnot in this neck of the woods.”

Bears weren’t actually native to this part of Missouri, but before Newt could correct him, there was another crack from behind them. Hermann jumped nearly a foot in the air, Newt letting out a string of profanities in English, German, and what little Mandarin he actually did know. The shadows shifted, and a figure stepped out in front of them.

“What the hell happened to you two?” asked Vanessa, looking at them amusedly. “Y’all look like you’ve seen a ghost.”


	7. Here and Now

It turned out, surprisingly enough, Hermann actually knew how to drive.

He had waved Vanessa into the backseat, insisting she take a break from piloting and sleep for at least a few extra hours, then shifted the driver’s seat forward a few inches, propped the back so his posture was ramrod-straight, and sped smoothly onto the road at double the speed limit.

Hermann did know how to drive, that was technically a fact, but when it came to following things like “proper safety precautions” and “being a good lane neighbor” and “the rules of the road”, he was absolutely abysmal.

Newt flinched for the fifteenth time that hour as Hermann accelerated and weaved around a car that was driving perhaps one mile or two slower than it could have. “Dude,” he said anxiously, “just because we’re on a bit of a time crunch doesn’t mean you have to reenact every car chase scene in modern cinema.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” replied Hermann in a clipped voice, and jerked the wheel violently to the left to zoom around a bend in the road. Newt swore in German and grabbed the door handle.

“Are you sure it’s not a better idea to let me drive?”

Hermann gave him a familiar look that said, _Newton why on Earth would you ask such a moronic question?_. “Ah yes, because allowing a man currently sharing his body with genocidal aliens who could take over and crash us at any moment, is a splendid idea. Much safer than this.”

Newt’s jaw tightened as the car swerved again. “Yep. This is soooo safe. Super safe. Epiphernally safe, the safest I’ve ever felt in一”

“Shut up, Newton,” Hermann muttered in a cadace that was oddly familiar (not in his voice, but perhaps someone else’s. Newt couldn’t put a finger on it). Newt rolled his eyes and shifted in his seat.

“Fine, then, distract me while I wait for our impending doom.”

“With what?” Hermann huffed, thankfully not taking his eyes off the road to roll them. Newt decided on a question that had been burning a hole in the back of his mind.

“I dunno. What did _you_ do this past year? I know you’re still working for the PPDC.”

Hermann paused, his eyes almost moving, then nodded. “Yes, on the Jaeger program. They’re working on using them as… peacekeeping tools.”

Newt’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry一 what?”

Hermann shifted uncomfortably. “I一 I don’t exactly support it, much less see any use for machines of that size in civilian life, but ever since the end of the war there’s been a surge in homemade Jaegers. Especially by people who should not, under any circumstances, have one.”

“Like what?” Newt asked, still trying to process this.

“Crime rings. Local gangs. Billionaires with access to the technology and the desire to use them for ‘company enforcement’. Honestly, if you’ll excuse my presumption, I’m surprised the Precursors didn’t have one while posing as you.”

Newt blinked. “Huh. Why didn’t you guys think of that?”

“_Because that would be the equivalent of getting mauled by a bear with mounted assault rifles, and then deciding to breed your own and keep it as a pet_,” the Precursors said testily. Hermann snickered at that.

“Thank goodness, then. Although I suppose that field was always my strong suit, anyway.”

Newt considered taking that as an insult before wondering what might have happened if he _did_ give the Precursors knowledge of how to build their own Jaeger. It wouldn’t have been hard; they probably could have emailed Hermann asking for old schematics, or dug through Newt’s files. He wasn’t quite sure how they would have controlled it without a Drift partner, though. Better to have never had to find out.

“Can we get back to the whole ‘peacekeeping’ thing, though?” he asked. “Sounds a little ‘1984’ to me, dude. Cops weren’t bad enough, now they’re using robots to enforce the system?”

“Like I said, I don’t support it,” Hermann said. “But not all of us were given offers from billion-dollar tech startups, Newton.”

“Right, yours were trillion-dollar,” Newt shot back. “Why even stay working for the PPDC, anyway? Shao fucking sucked, yeah, I won’t deny it, but at least I didn’t have the world goddamn military breathing down my neck anymore.”

Hermann grew very quiet. “So would you have left, then? Even if the Precursors weren’t manipulating you?”

Newt opened his mouth, then closed it. He knew the answer (of course not, God no, he would have stayed with or followed Hermann to the other side of the planet just to keep their hands holding each other), but it would definitely make things worse if Hermann knew just how much Newt cared for him. He let the dead air fester between them.

“I wouldn’t have gone to Shao,” he said finally, choosing his words carefully. “Probably taken a teaching gig back at MIT. I remember those guys were raring to have me back.”

Hermann looked almost surprised at this, eyes flashing distant for just a moment. “Oh.”

“What?” Newt asked nervously, wondering if that had been too much. Hermann glanced over at him, then back at the road.

“No, no, it’s just…” he swallowed visibly. “I received an offer from them as well. To teach physics. With room for specialized classes, of course. And tenure.”

Newt’s heart shuddered in his chest. _We could have…_ he thought. Him and Hermann. Teaching together in Boston, with maybe a little apartment and a cat and mugs they stole from each other most of the time. Eating lunch together between classes, Newt sitting on the edge of his desk and Hermann in an ergonomic chair they got at Ikea together their first week in town, in competition to see who could catch the most grapes (bought at the local farmer’s market a few blocks away) in their mouth. Movie nights on the couch with shitty popcorn. Hermann’s seven different knit blankets. Both of them still wildly traumatized, yes, (Newt had almost been eaten for Christ’s sake), but reconstructing. Building a life together. And maybe, maybe, they would have inched their way towards something that involved making that life a promise. Newt’s stomach ached.

_We could’ve had a home together_, he thought bitterly, imagining each word a dagger in the Precursors’ pulsating hive. _A fucking real good home. Jobs and cabinets and books and silverware. But you took that from me; not just me, you took it from Hermann. And now all we’ve got is this plan, and a car, and the, might I fucking mention, incredibly human hope that everything’ll turn out okay in the end. And that’s it! That’s all we have. Everything’s built on this. So I hope you know that, even if you bastards can never understand the rest._ The Precursors were silent. Tears, hot and stinging, pricked in the corners of Newt’s eyes, and he dug his nails into his palms so hard it hurt. 

_I mean, if you count the times you let me talk to him over the past year, and that’s including letters and emails that I don’t even know if he read, and you measure the short fucking leash you keep me on一 and then you ask me to help you kill everyone and everything I’ve ever cared about! And give me shit for needing him when you’re the ones who took that away! You have no idea how bad it gets; you’re not fucking human! And maybe he never felt the same way一 I know he doesn’t now一 but I would have cut off my hands to keep from touching him again if it meant I could be his for one goddamn day!_

The words spun around in his mind, faster and faster in a cloud of crumpled static, like a scribble of lead on a page, until Newt said numbly, without thinking, “I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Hermann didn’t even hesitate to respond. “Don’t you dare. I would never forgive you.”

Newt looked over at him in surprise, but Hermann stared straight ahead. A tiny smile slipped onto his face. He cleared his throat. “Would it be stupid and insanely cheesy to say that I knew you would save me?”

This time Hermann did return his gaze. His face was suddenly pink. “What?”

“You know me better than anyone else, man. Granted, the truth was pretty wild, so I didn’t expect you to come breaking down my door without a little nudging, but I knew you were gonna figure it out somehow and save me.” He chuckled lightly. “Even if I had to make a deal with the devil.”

“This is all rather Faustian, isn’t it?” Hermann said. “Or Greek.”

Newt took his chance to change the tone. “Beauty is terror! Fuck your mom! Absolutely nothing makes sense anymore and by God we’re gonna roll with it!”

_You people are fucking weird_, the Precursors said. Newt rolled his eyes.

“Oh how easily you all forget the time you ate a hard boiled egg with the shell on in the middle of the cafeteria.”

_And yet no one thought that was out of the ordinary for you! Much to think about, Geiszler_.

“I’m sorry, who’s body had to go through the indigestion following their consumption of an entire fucking eggshell? Who was given the oh so wonderful honor of being in control for that? I vomited like that kid from the exorcist.”

Hermann looked over at him oddly. “If we might put aside the events you’re describing, I must say it’s _incredibly_ jarring to hear only one side of a conversation in real life.”

“Imagine being the poor sap having to have that conversation, Hermann,” Newt grumbled. “Trust me, I’d much rather it be you in my head.”

Hermann made an affirmative noise. “That would be rather poetic, yes.”

“Assuming God works that way in the first place? Planning shit with, I dunno, metaphor and literary terms in mind?”

“Oh heavens no,” Hermann said. “Sometimes you walk through the wardrobe and Narnia isn’t on the other side. Sometimes there’s just another wall. But that, of course, is when you get out an ax. We all have to make our own stories somehow.”

Newt snorted. “I thought you hated poetry. And politics and promises and all that.”

“I never said I didn’t. Unfortunately, however, I did share my mind with a bloody _artist_ just over a year ago, and I can’t seem to fumigate things.”

The snort turned into a full-on laugh. “Yeah, man, I keep getting these weird hard-ons whenever I watch _The Imitation Game_.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Newton,” Hermann snapped, “that movie was highly inaccurate and complete character slander.” Then, after a pause, “And I am not sexually attracted to Alan Turing. It’s an admiration.”

“You had a framed picture of him on your desk, Hermann.”

In lieu of a response, Hermann slammed on the accelerator so that the car jerked forwards, then backwards, causing Newt to slam back into his seat with a “thwump!”. He wheezed, the seatbelt having knocked the wind out of him. “Asshole.”

“I have utterly no idea what you’re talking about. I saw a possum.”

“Possums aren’t native to South Dakota you dipstick. Eyes on the _road_.”

Hermann smiled to himself and didn’t say anything after that. Newt, once he had readjusted his seatbelt, reached over and turned the radio on low. He rotated the dial, flipping through a few stations before settling on one playing an indie song he somewhat recognized. It faded out as he leaned back into his seat.

When the first few notes of the next song began, Hermann’s eyebrows flicked up. “Oh, I think you played this song once in the lab. It was raining that day.”

“Huh,” Newt said, trying to place it in his memory. It did sound familiar, and there was a tug in the center of his chest he recognized. The lyrics came in:

“_Thinking outrageously I write in cursive/I hide in my bed with the lights on the floor. Wearing three layers of coats and leg warmers/I see my own breath on the face of the door._”

And just like that the memory hit him: rain pounding on the windows of the lab and the ground that came up to their height. Chalk and formaldehyde and coffee brewing in the kitchenette to stave off the chill of an approaching autumn. Clack. Clack. White marks on the blackboards. Boots tapping on the drain. Newt’s shitty portable speaker playing this song, him humming along under his breath as he poured one sugar into Hermann’s mug, two in his, and a little rationed cream in each. Their fingers touched when he handed his to him, but back then it had burned for different reasons. Forbidden in a way that didn’t feel quite as real. 

Newt swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he said, voice suddenly rough. His fingers twitched on the seat rests. “I remember.”

Hermann’s eyes looked far away again. “It’s funny,” he said in a voice that made it clear how humorous he really did find things. “How much the world has changed since then. I know it’s only been a year, but… everything’s different now.”

“In a good way or bad?” Newt asked. 

“I don’t know,” he replied, hands moving on the steering wheel like a military drumbeat, “I suppose that all depends on us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i DID use the brokeback mountain monologue i AM the worst gay person in america i AM


	8. A Fire in the Desert

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this one is late if you want to know why check the lesbian newmann tag and come go absolutely fucking insane with me over the newest post

The thing about Colorado was that it was absolutely, soul-shakingly, mind-bogglingly terrifying.

After five years in the cramped bowels of the stifling Hong Kong Shatterdome, and another one in their own respective cities, Newt and Hermann hadn’t been faced with this much open land and sky in quite some time. It was breathtaking, massive and scorching blue and only ending at the horizon far, far away. Looking up, Newt felt as if his soul was being sucked out of his body and into space, leaving him feeling very empty and small and not at all like an international hero. He felt dizzy, and a little bit nauseous. A glance to the right told him Hermann was having a similar experience.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it,” he said faintly. “Not after… well.”

Newt gave him a questioning look.

“Well,” Hermann said again. “We would have fought to the bitter end, of course, all of us, butㅡ it became difficult to see a future during those last few months. Or years.” He took a deep breath of dry, hot air. “And now we’re here. In the middle of a country in a world whose very existence is a miracle.”

Newt snorted. “Science isn’t a miracle.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he replied quietly, and Newt didn’t quite know how to respond to that.

Vanessa popped open the trunk and handed them each a pair of tennis shoes (“trainers”, Hermann called them, but he was incorrect) that had migrated to the bottom of their duffel bags from lack of use. She pointed a finger at Hermann.

“If your knee starts to hurt,” she ordered, “you tell us. You don’t wait until it’s too much to handle, you don’t muddle through to save your ego or our hike; you tell us. Because if you end up not being able to walk?” She grinned mischievously. “Newt’s gonna carry you the whole way back.”

“I _am_?” Newt half-sputtered.

“He’s _what_?” Hermann choked at the same time. They looked at each other, then quickly turned away. Vanessa still had on that dastardly smile.

“Bridle style is the most energy-efficient, I hear.”

Hermann pressed his mouth into a flat line and snatched the shoes from her hand. “Fine. Right. Let’s go then, before it gets too hot.”

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

“_What exactly_,” asked the Precursors, “_are we looking for here_?”

“Rocks and trouble,” Newt replied, and felt his eyes roll of their own volition. 

The desert sands crunched loudly beneath their feet as they wound around a rock formation; the fourth they had seen in the past thirty minutes. The trail they were following through Garden of the Gods National Park was the shortest one; relatively flat and free of rubble, but the sun was beginning to climb higher in the sky and heat up the air. Hermann pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow.

“I would like you both to know that there were just as many rocks in the visitors’ center, and it had air conditioning.”

Newt shot Vanessa a look, and she snickered behind her hand. “Hermann,” she said, “it’s either this, or a bunch of screaming middle schoolers on a field trip. You pick.”

Hermann winced at the idea. “I suppose the quiet is preferable to… that.”

“Also,” Newt added with a grin, “you get the bonus of having me as your guide here.”

“You’re a biologist, Newton. Rocks are dead.”

“Technically since they were never alive, they can’t be dead. They’re inorganic material.”

“And let me guess,” Hermann said snidely, “geology was one of your, how many? Oh yes, _six_ highly unnecessary Ph.Ds.”

“Cranky that you only have one, aren’t we?”

“I only needed one to prove that I was an expert in my field,” Hermann replied airily, and Newt scowled.

“Okay, well forgive me for having a wide variety of interests and skills Mr. Doctorate Police.”

“That’s _Doctor_ Doctorate Police to you.”

“That’s not even an identifier of academicㅡ”

“Hey y’all?” Vanessa interrupted in a voice made for stadiums. “I think I’ve found that trouble Newt’s looking for.”

She pointed with her arm to the fence a few yards away that marked the edge of the park property. Newt gave her a confused look, and she moved her arm higher. He followed the line it made to a small dot of bright light in the distance, winking in and out. In the last few dregs of dawn darkness he could just see its shape; flashing in and out between milliseconds.

“Is that a fire?” he wondered aloud. “Or headlights?”

“I think there might be somebody out there,” Vanessa said. “Or something.” She strode forward and stepped over the fence with ease. “C’mon, let’s check it out.”

Newt, unable to see (or care about) a problem with that, followed suit, but Hermann made a noise that he tended to associate with the breaking of lab safety rules.

“You two cannot be serious,” he said. “Not only are we leaving the grounds for what may be private property, property that we could be arrested for trespassing on no less, but we have utterly no idea what’s out there, who is making that light, and if they could be dangerous! Which, considering that they’re out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, is most likely the case!”

Newt and Vanessa turned back to look at him blankly. Vanessa blinked. “Consider,” she said, “the fact that Newt and I are going no matter what, and you’ll be left out here alone.”

Hermann let out a frustrated groan, but couldn’t really argue with that. He stepped over the fence.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

They walked for about fifteen more minutes, sun beating down harder as each passed by. Newt noticed Hermann begin to rub at his leg from out of the corner of his eye. He shot him a concerned look, but Hermann shook his head when he saw.

“About how much further do you think?” Newt asked Vanessa. She squinted in front of them.

“It’s kinda hard to see, but I think it’s just another minute. The sun’s too bright to see the fire that well.”

Indeed, after another several yards they passed over a small hill and reached the site. Or rather, campsite.

There was barely any sign of human-esque life there; no tin cups or tents toolboxes. The fire in question was still burning, and strewn about it were sticks, branches, piles of ash, and small hunks of what looked like half-eaten animals. Flies buzzed above them, and Hermann wrinkled his nose.

“I think that seems enough evidence for danger as any,” he said briskly. “We need toㅡ”

In the quiet of the desert wilderness, the sound of a gun cocking behind them was crystal clear.

“Don’t move,” said a voice, rough and hissing like an open canister of CO2. “Turn around. Slow. Keep your hands visible and your mouths shut.”

The three of them turned cautiously, Newt’s heart beating in his throat like bile. The figure was holding a long hunting rifle, clutched tightly in their mottled hands. Their nails were strangely long and curved, and they made shrieking scratching noises on the barrel when they adjusted their grip. Newt realized, with a swooping sensation in his stomach, that they were wearing a grubby, torn hoodie pulled low over their face.

At the sight of their faces, the figure suddenly straightened and dropped the gun to their side. “Oh!” they said breathlessly, “_Oh_. There you are. This far. Already, it seems. I didn’t expect this way.” They scuttled (that was the only word for it) forward, gesturing the three of them to the logs surrounding the fire pit. “Sit, sit! You must be… weary, is the word, I think. From your travels. Your journey nears its end.”

Newt stared at Hermann, who stared back at him, then at Vanessa. All three of them recognized the stranger, and “What the fuck,” was the general sentiment. 

The person(?) did have a gun, however, so they really had no choice but to sit.

After settling onto a log, they knocked their knees together and set the gun down, folding their hands. “So,” they said, “so. You are curious. That’s good. We know that, of course, of course, but that is good.”

“We?” asked Vanessa, facing creasing from a frown of worry to confusion. “There are more of you? Than you plus the guy from the gas station, I assume.”

The person nodded. “More, yes. They, one of us also.” They spread their hands in a gesture of gravitas, fingers now clearly dappled with patches of scales. The hood did not shift. In a low, thrumming voice they said, “You see. There are oracles on these roads.”

Hermann stared at their hands. “Oㅡ Oracles?” he said.

“You have been watched,” continued the person, moving their hands slowly and methodically like an incantation. “Watched by Oracles. There are Oracles on these roads, and they have been following you closely.”

“And you are?” asked Hermann. “One of these… oracles?”

“Oracles,” corrected the one in question. “Not a thing. A sense. A force. A notion in time and direction, incomprehensible to you. A notion in space, between and through.”

“What _are_ they?” Newt managed. “Or, I guess, what are you?”

“The watching ones,” the Oracle answered. “The walking ones, the waking ones, the ones who see between the worlds.”

“Between the worlds,” Vanessa repeated. “Like, you’re aliens?”

Beside her, Newt and Hermann stiffened in alarm. The Oracle shook their head. “No,” they said. “You do not even understand the most basic shape of it. We are patches of Rift. Children of the Breach. Did you think there was only one way into your world?”

_I can think of another way_, Newt thought.

“When your Breach closed,” the Oracle said, seeming to speak to both the humans and the Precursors at the same time, “the Oracles were born. Pulled into the pockets that opened throughout the world, the bubbles that form when a larger one is pressed down. We were changed, and we died, and were reborn all in that moment. Pulled to become the Breaches. There are hundreds of Oracles, and there is only one Oracle, and we see between the worlds. Between the folds.”

“Between dimensions,” Newt finished. The Oracle nodded.

“We have watched your progress, and the Anteverse’s progress, and we have watched them watch you.” They raised their head so that a pair of crisp, bright blue eyes could be seen in the darkness. “You will find what you seek, what _all_ of you seek, at the place where it all began.”

The words escaped Newt’s mouth before he could think about it. “San Francisco. Where the first attack hit.”

“_Yes_,” the Oracle cooed. “The graves. The graveyard. The living and the dead become one, and they speak, and they remember. _You_ must remember.”

Newt squirmed in his seat. It felt as if they were looking directly at him. Hermann spoke up tentatively.

“Can you tell us more?” he asked. The Oracle only looked at them. 

“You must remember,” they repeated. “A world that leaves its mistakes behind will fall into the same pit as before. You must listen, and you _must_ remember.”

Then they stood, dusted the sand off of their jeans, and began to walk back the way Newt, Hermann, and Vanessa had come without a word. The three of them looked at each other, then the Oracle, and rose to follow them back.

The journey to the park limits was silent, with only the wisps of a breeze stretching across the desert for company. Hermann’s jaw grew tighter and tighter as his knee clearly bothered him, but he said nothing. When they reached the fence, the Oracle turned to the trio.

They remained still for a long, shivering moment. Newt scuffed his shoe on the ground. Above them, a buzzard screamed into the yawning sky. The air felt thin and sterile and wild, and some deep instinct pricked at the back of his neck.

Then the Oracle spun on one shoe and began walking. They didn’t look back.

Newt swallowed hard, his throat dry and aching. He looked at Vanessa, who was twirling a lock of hair nervously between her fingers. 

“So,” she said tensely, “what do we do now?”

Hermann looked around, as if answers would be hiding somewhere in the rocks and scrub brushes. When none appeared, he took in and out a deep breath. “I suppose,” he said, then paused for just a second. “Well. I suppose we go to the grave.”


	9. Forwards and Backwards

“Okay,” said Vanessa, turning in her seat to the passenger’s side and fixing Newt with an uncomfortably potent stare, “out with it.”

“Uh. With what?” Newt asked nervously, mind already racing with the possibilities of what she knew. He began to bounce his leg semi-subconsciously. “Was I supposed toㅡ”

She cut him off with a flap of her hand. “No, Jesus, I’m asking about what the Oracle said. You looked like you knew what they meant. Noㅡ scratch that,” she said at Newt’s expression, “you _definitely_ know what they meant.”

Newt glanced out the window at the CVS where Hermann was buying waters. He could see a fuzzy picture of him through the layers of glass, nowhere near the counter. At this safety, he swallowed hard. “I… yeah. I think I kind of know something about it.”

“‘Something’,” Vanessa repeated flatly. “The Oracle kept saying ‘remember’. Remember what?”

Newt’s leg bounced harder. “Uh.” He considered the pros and cons of telling Hermann’s very accomplished, very attractive, _very_ scary girlfriend about his one-night stand/ten-year period romance with her boyfriend. She narrowed her eyes. It was clear he had no choice in the matter.

Newt’s shoulders slumped. “Please, please don’t get mad,” he said, which as prefaces to a story went, wasn’t the most reassuring. Vanessa gave him a nod of her head to continue.

“Okay,” he said, “so the thing about the whole ‘remember’ thing is that… yeah. I do know what they meant by it. Because, uh, really really long story short, the night after we all saved the world on V-Day, Hermann and I, uh, kindasortahadsexslashmadeloveorwhateveryouwanttocallitㅡand now he doesn’t remember. Didn’t remember, actually, due to us both being pretty drunk at the time. And we fought about it. And it kinda made things infinitely worse. And that sort of contributed to why ‘I’ ran off to Shao. Due to the whole emotional gas fire thing currently happening.” He took a deep breath, face slightly red from talking without pause. “So I think, according to the Oracle, I need to tell Hermann about what happened so he can remember. But, y’know, obviously I’m not a fan of doing that since he’s your boyfriend, and that would be a really shitty thing to do, so.” Newt spread his hands and grinned weakly. “So the problem presents itself.”

Vanessa stared at him for a good, long thirty seconds. Newt squirmed under her gaze. He considered getting ready to run.

Then, she burst out laughing.

“What the _fuck_, dude?” Newt said incredulously, eyes nearly popping out of his head as Vanessa struggled to breathe. He threw up his hands as best he could in the car. “Dude! Why are you laughing? I literally just told you I fucked your boyfriend!” Vanessa made a kind of hoarse gulping sound. “What the hell am I missing here?!”

Vanessa waved her hand at him to stop, catching her breath and bringing herself down. “Oh my _God_,” she managed, still giggling. “Holy shit. Newt. Oh my God. I’m not dating Hermann.”

Newt blinked in surprise. “But then why are youㅡwhy _not_?”

She gave a final, high-pitched wheeze. “Because we’re both _gay_.”

Newt’s mouth dropped open to a comical level of height, which set Vanessa off again. Now he was also forgetting how to breathe. “Whㅡ” he sputtered, “you’reㅡyou and heㅡ_what_?!”

“Newton Geiszler you _dipshit_,” she cackled, “he’s fruitier than a fucking Edible Arrangement, and I’ve eaten my way through half the Victoria’s Secret angels! We are both so, so gay it’s unreal!”

“Then why the hell do you call him ‘noodle’?!”

“Because I’m southern and it annoys him!” she exclaimed. “I’m his best friend; of course I’m gonna rib him with dumb nicknames!”

Newt let out a shaky breath. “So… you’re not dating.”

“No!”

“And you’re not in love with Hermann.”

“I feel so fucking bad for _you_ that you are, that man never washes his socks,” she said, smirking like a Dreamworks character on a movie poster. Newt considered snapping back at her for that, but then realized something.

“Wait. Then how _do_ you know Hermann?”

The lightest blush snaked across Vanessa’s face, and she sobered immediately. “Uh. We grew up together. Me and him and his sister, Karla. Twin sister. That stuff.”

A lightbulb flickered on in Newt’s head. “Oh, holy shit. You two are doing a Lavender Marriage-type thing, right? For you and the sister; Karla?”

The color on her face deepened. “Not, uh, exactly.”

Newt frowned. “You’re not dating Karla?”

Vanessa pressed her lips together very, very hard. “Well no. Not exactly.”

“You just said ‘exactly’ twice, dude.”

Appearing to be moments away from either passing out or punching him in the face, Vanessa blinked in a way that many would label as, “oh Jesus fuck that’s creepy”. “I did. I did do that, yes.”

Newt frowned, concerned for both his own life, and possibly hers. “Are you having a stroke?”

“Newton Mendelsson Geiszler I am about to tell you something that you will either take to your grave, or go to your grave wishing you had never blabbed about. And I need you to listen really closely.” Her face was deadly serious, with a heavy emphasis on the “deadly”. Newt leaned away slightly, but conveyed his attention.

“Uh. Okay.”

She repeated the motion with her lips. “Okay, so like. The thing is. That I _am_ not dating Karla. That’s like, a verifiable fact. But. I wouldn’t be opposed to the concept.”

“Are you sure you’re not having aㅡ”

“What part,” she screeched, adding the appropriate hand motions, “of ‘I’ve been in love with Hermann’s sister for years but I’m too chickenshit to tell her and I can’t tell him because it would ruin our friendship forever’ do you not fucking understand, you baby-faced little Scott Pilgrim ripoff?!”

Newt didn’t really know what to say to _that_.

Eventually he decided on, “None of it. Also. You’ve been pining over a Gottlieb for thirty seven years?”

“I know it sort of beats your decade plus one, but I have faith you’ll get over it,” she sneered, the effect sort of lessened by her complexion edging on rosewood. Newt raised an eyebrow.

“But I’ve seen pictures,” he said, “isn’t Karla aㅡ”

_Cachuck!_

They were both startled out of their seats by the sound of the side door opening, and Hermann climbed in with a sweating plastic bag.

“That was an ordeal,” he said, not seeming to notice their expressions (Newt’s mouth was a flat line and his eyes were darting back and forth; Vanessa looked like someone had just cold-clocked her with a sack of bricks). “It was obviously that cashier’s first day, I’ll make that wager.” He looked up at them obliviously. “Oh, you two didn’t murder each other while I was gone. Lovely.”

“Absolutely fantastic,” said Vanessa in a strained voice, and started the car without another word to Newt. “Pass me my water please.” Hermann did, and she drained the bottle in one go while slowly crushing the plastic in an ominous crunch.

(Newt chose not to comment when she rode up on the curb as they sped out. The past year had given him enough of a sense of self-preservation to keep his mouth shut.)

“Newt, for fuck’s sake stop wincing.”

(Well, almost enough).

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

Newt estimated it had been about twenty minutes before Vanessa burst into the hotel bathroom, forgoing any knocking after the gesture had been ignored the past five times. He wrenched the hem of his shirt down just as the door opened, and stood there guiltily while she fixed him with a glare.

“You have been in here,” she said testily, “for way longer than it takes someone who looks like you to shower. In fact, I can tell by your hair that it took you maybe five minutes. So what the hell is going on.”

Newt felt his shoulders unconsciously hunch in; not a motion from the Precursors, but almost an instinct. “Um. I was shaving?” he tried. Vanessa just looked pointedly at his stubble. 

“Newt, buddy,” she said, expression softening as she spoke, “do I or Hermann need to have a talk with the freeriders up top?”

“No!” Newt answered quickly. Too quickly. Vanessa turned in the doorway, opening her mouth to call for Hermann, but Newt put up his hands. “Wait! Don’tㅡdon’t tell Hermann. Please.”

She turned back to him, eyebrows knit. “Okay. Then tell me what’s going on. Are you _okay_, seriously?”

Newt felt his entire body tense up, like a rabbit frozen in an open field. He glanced down at his shirt, then back up at Vanessa. She looked genuinely concerned, taking a step forward and motioning with her head for him to speak. Newt swallowed the lump in his throat. “Don’t tell Hermann,” he said again.

Then he pulled his shirt up.

All the color drained from Vanessa’s face, and she let out a whoosh of air. “Jesus shit,” she said faintly. “Newt. You fucking liar. What the hell did they do to you?”

“Don’t tell Hermann.” It was like a mantra. He couldn’t stop saying it. Vanessa’s gaze burned on his abdomen, slipping over each of the ribs that were visible under a layer of monsters so dull and pathetic, they didn’t look like the ones in Newt’s head at all. He clenched his jaw, hard, and pulled the fabric back down. “Yeah. Sort of been spiral city in here for a hot minute.”

“Newt,” Vanessa said, not even bothering to keep the alarm out of her voice, “what actually happened while you were gone this past year? You should be in a goddamn hospital.”

Newt gripped the hem of his shirt hard, digging his fingernails into his palm. He tapped his foot nervously on the wet tile, light slapping sounds the only noise in the small room. Vanessa gently shut the door. “Newt.”

“It wasn’tㅡ” he started, then stopped and listened. Nothing from the Precursors, just a faint sense of a presence at the base of his skull. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. “It wasn’t… I mean, I’m not dead, so it couldn’t have been _that_ bad.”

Vanessa didn’t seem reassured by his wane smile; in fact, it only seemed to deepen her frown. “Vanessa, _really_. It wasn’t.”

“You’re a ‘_really_’ terrible liar, Newt.”

Newt felt something large and tender twist inside his chest, like a dimensioned bruise. The feeling trickled down into his stomach and squeezed around the organ, pulsing with a nauseating beat. His nose burned, then the corners of his eyes. He tried to bite some sense into his tongue; everything was okay and he was fine. Everything was okay and he was fine. He was okay and everything wasㅡwasㅡ

“_Newton_.”

The first tear escaped his grasp as he bit out in a cold, wavering voice, “It was fucking awful.”

And then, like a bandaid torn from a stab wound, it all came pouring out.

“IㅡI couldn’t do _anything_, and everything kept getting worse and worse and my brain was so _loud_, and it felt like something was choking me from the inside out and I started seeing shit that wasn’t there, and it was fucking _terrifying_ dude, because I knew if I said anything the med officers would take one look at my file and throw me in a bed with straps up to my neck, or even worse a full-on _facility_, and I can’t fucking do that again Vanessa, I can’t, so I just kept trying and trying to fix it until I finally said ‘okay, fuck it!’ and plugged in to that stupid brain, and it was _awful_ and it hurt so, _so_ bad, so obviously my garbage-fire coping mechanisms ate it right up, and next thing I know I’m waking up on the ceiling of an apartment I have absolutely zero memory buying, getting my Casper the Friendly Ghost-style self put through the Drift equivilent of a paper shredder each night while those motherfuckers just get stronger, and once again I’m just trying and _trying_ to fix it, and they won’t stop bitching and screaming and ruining my life day after day after fucking day, and yes, Vanessa, not eating shit except protein shakes and the occasional baby unicorn, and every time I even get close to getting free and stopping them, they spell me out in excruciating detail all the horrible things they’re going to do to Hermann if I fight back! And I don’t care what they do to me, I really fucking don’t, but after everything I put him through and everything I feel for him and every goddamn horrible thing they’ve turned me into, I _cannot_ let them hurt him!”

Newt took a deep, rattling breath and swiped away the tears running down his face with the back of his hand. He gulped in air, then bit down on the inside of his cheek. His chest felt split open and raw, spilling sewage onto the puddled bathroom tile. “I’m sorry. I’m so _fucking_ sorry Vanessa, but I just _can’t_.”

Vanessa stared silently at him for a long, long moment before striding forward and pulling him into a tight, fierce hug. “You shouldn’t have to,” she said firmly, placing a warm hand on Newt’s back, “you brave, stupid, tragic little man.”

Newt let out a wet chuckle. “You’ve been hanging around Hermann too much. That sounds just like him.”

“Good,” she said, “because it’s exactly what he would say. He wouldn’t blame you; _I_ don’t blame you. Nobody in their right mind would.”

Newt made a cracked noise of disbelief. “But Iㅡ”

“You didn’t do anything. No one would purposefully bring this nightmare on themselves. And if you had just talked Hermann, I know he would have helped you.”

“I was the one who fucked this up in the first place,” he said bitterly. “It was my mistake, and he shouldn’t have to deal with consequences that aren’t his fault.”

“What the hell else do you think friends are for?!” she exclaimed. “Newt, Hermann is here for you. I’m here for you. And whatever happens, we’re going to figure it out together because we care about you and want you to be okay.” She pulled back and gave him a reassuring smile. “I mean, obviously you’re not gonna be overnight, but you deserve to make a start.”

Newt chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I mean. Look, ‘Ness, that’s… _really_ nice to hear, butㅡit’s just so complicated.”

She raised both eyebrows. “I actually do get it, y’know. Hermann gets it. Tons of people get it, because your experiences might be pretty weird, but they’re a lot more common than you think.”

“What, are you gonna take me on a whirlwind healing journey with people who have gone through the same metaphorical experiences as me, and have me learn some valuable lessons about the recovery process or whatever as a result?” he said dryly.

“No, dipshit, I’m gonna give you another hug. And then you’re gonna go talk to Hermann and fix this whole mess.”

Newt felt a stab of anxiety in his chest. “Not… not right this second. But I will. I promise.” He pointed a finger at her. “And then, _you_ have to talk to Karla.”

Vanessa rolled her eyes and huffed. “Fine. Whatever it takes to end this ridiculous little homosocial soap opera currently festering in my car.”

“Did you just call my eleven year romantic crisis a ‘homosocial soap opera’?”

She smiled smoothly. “I did. And now I’m going to hug you again, because despite the loss of body fat, you still have an extremely huggable shape. Like a little gerbil with very ugly glasses.”

“Why the hell does everyone say they’re ugly?” he muttered, but a hug was a goddamned hug, so Newt opened his arms and took it with a minimal resurgence of tears.


	10. Quiet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was brought to you by hurt less by julien baker. stan for clear skin and an onset of lesbianism

In an attempt to retain some of his sanity throughout the past year, Newt had developed what he called, “the Five Second Breakdown”. It went a little something like this:

During the moments that he was in control, and before he had realized this control was something fleeting, Newt was near-constantly bombarded by wave after wave of crippling despair, loneliness, and rage. If he allowed himself to give in to these feelings every time they arose, he would never get anything done, and thus face even more (increasingly creative and macabre) punishment from the Precursors. They valued, first and foremost, efficiency. Newt was to stick to these values.

However, he remained, at least mentally, human, and couldn’t simply ignore these feelings until they went away. His body was in constant crisis mode, day after day after day, and remained in limbo between fight or flight despite Newt appearing to have all the trappings of a perfectly ideal life (the real tragedy, he sometimes thought bitterly to himself, was that to the outside eye, this transformation of his appeared by all accounts the model success story). So, he had been forced to come up with a method of releasing some of that despair in short, manageable increments that didn’t cut into “his” work time. 

Thus, the Five Second Breakdown was born.

The way it worked was admittedly unhealthy, but practical. When a suitable time or place presented itself, Newt would cover his face with his hands and count to five. Within those five seconds, he would allow himself to scream or cry silently, contort his face into various sobs, and feel the full weight of his panic and grief. Then, when the time was up, he would scrub his hands over his face, let out a shaky breath, and resume whatever it is the Precursors had ordered him to do.

In essence, Newt Geiszler had become an expert at tearing his heart open and squishing it back together all in the span of about a handstand. This was how he had survived that year. He had not exactly considered how it might affect him once/if this nightmare were ever over. Once he was safe again. Once he wasn’t constantly on the brink of losing his mind.

He was not sure he remembered any other way to be.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

They were at the Grand Canyon.

Vanessa was digging around in the backseat for her camera (polaroid, like, duh), and Hermann was trying to set the blanket down on the dusty ground where their car was parked, but Newt was staring out at the vastness of it all, mind both buzzing and still.

_This is the Canyon you all were so excited for?_ the Precursors asked. Newt nodded.

“Yeah. It’s the biggest in the world. Well, other than the Marianas Trench.”

_It’s… large_, they said, _and so red. Not red, but… orange. And purple. So many colors in one space._

Newt smiled. “Have anything like this back where you live?”

Inside his mind, the Precursors shook their heads. _No. We have valleys and rivers and canyons of gold and metals you can’t imagine. But we don’t have… the colors. Those are unique to your world._

“I told you: Earth’s pretty great once you get to know it.” Newt reached in his pocket and pulled out his phone, typing in a few search words before looking back out into nowhere. “There’s a poem about it.”

He looked down at his phone again.

“I love my country. By which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history, who have fought the government to make right. Where so many cunning sons and daughters, our fore mothers and forefathers came singing through slaughter, came through hell and high water so that we could stand here, and behold breathlessly the sight. How a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light.”

The Precursors were silent, but Newt could feel them behind his eyes, searching. He said, “Annie deFranco wrote that.”

_And you call that… a poem?_

“Yeah. There are lots of ‘em written about here. It’s pretty inspiring.”

_We don’t have poetry either._

“Too busy building an army of giant monsters to destroy us all?” Newt laughed. From the car, Hermann gave him an odd look.

“Are they being noisy again?” he asked, walking over to stand next to Newt, his cane crunching on the hard ground. Newt shook his head.

“Nah. I think they’re gonna be quiet for a little bit.”

The Precursors said nothing in reply. They were behind Newt’s eyes, making him turn his head left and right so as to drink in the massive vista laid out before them.The sky was filled with ruffled clouds, puffing up in little lumps of pink and purple and blue. The sun dipped low in the sky, a bright ball of molten gold sinking below the orange horizon. Across the canyon, red and yellow and creamy tan rock layered on each other like the lines of a tapestry, the sunset washing the whole world in soft, dreamy mist. The rock seemed to glitter and twist as it wound its way down the canyon wall, weaving together in colorful lines of peach and crimson.

Newt huffed out a breath. “Check it out,” he said, “condensation.”

Hermann blinked, then breathed out slowly, letting his breath filter out in a cloud. Silently, he moved a tenth of an inch closer.

“Y’know,” said Newt, “I bet if I stood here long enough, I could feel the whole canyon with just my carbon dioxide.”

“That would take a very long time,” Hermann replied, but he smiled. “Do you think you would be patient enough?”

Newt shrugs. “I could try.” Then, he moved a half of an inch closer.

_Go on_, said the Precursors, _finish your little mating dance and let us watch the sky in peace._

Newt rolled his eyes, but reached his hand out into the soft evening air, into a space of possibility and fear, into a little pocket of hope between him and Hermann. Their fingers brushed.

Hermann froze, then glanced down to look. His face was pink in the dying light, and in this gentle moment, there was no longer a year or a mile or ten thousand separating them; there were only the molecules slotted in between their fingers, and the atoms on their skin. 

There was only this and this and them, so Hermann took his hand.

Vanessa macgyvered her camera into a perilous position on the lip of the driver’s seat window and hit the timer, squeezing in between Newt and Hermann and putting her arms around both their waists. 

“Smile!” she exclaimed, and despite the dread still simmering in his stomach for what was to come, Newt leaned into her and grinned. Whatever happened at that graveyard would be the end of it all. He at least wanted a photo before all hell (possibly) broke loose.

They laid out a blanket from the back of the car and sprawled on it with a kitchen-sink-esque collection of various leftovers, bags of chips and sundries, and a tray of cookies from one of the Hiltons that Vanessa had snuck into her purse (now that he wasn’t busy constantly viewing her through green-colored glasses, Newt was able to appreciate what a chaotic force of good she was, depending on who was in the line of fire). He lay on his back and stared up at the rapidly darkening sky, watching the stars become clearer and clearer this far from civilization.

“Check it out,” he said, pointing up at where Orion was beginning to dip out of the sky. “If you look just underneath Orion’s belt, you can see his dick.”

Hermann comically spat out a little of his water, but Vanessa let out a shout of laughter. “I see it! Hermann, look, there’s a little line of stars going down in the other direction!”

He shot Newt a glare that just managed to hide his amusement. “I’m so glad that after a year of abysmal Shanghai light pollution, this is the first constellation you choose to observe. My fears are assuaged, Newton; it appears you haven’t changed a bit.”

Newt stuck out his tongue to the side in Hermann’s direction. “Aw, baby, I knew you liked me for my scintillating brain and charming personality, and not my offshore Swiss bank accounts.”

Hermann stared at him. “You have offshore bank accounts?”

“I’m assuming. Hey, dipsticks, where _did_ you put all that money you made?”

“_What the fuck is a Swiss bank account?_” the Precursors said. “_You keep forgetting we only know what you do_.”

Newt blinked. “So… where did you put it?”

“_Uh, we turned it into gold bars and put it in a really big vault. That’s what Scrooge McDuck did_.”

“Did you fucking base all my financial decisions off of Scrooge McDuck?!”

“_We found him to be a model example!_”

“He’s a cartoon character from Ducktales you morons! He isn’t a real person!”

“_Of course he isn’t! He’s a duck!_”

Newt felt his face burn with embarrassment (and a tiny bit of anger; you could do a lot of good with stupid money like that), but turned when he heard Hermann’s laughter. His face was scrunched up with mirth, and the little lines around his eyes were visible as he giggled into his cupped hands. Newt felt his heart do backflips. He had forgotten the things Hermann’s laugh tended to do to his cardiovascular system.

Of course, that was when Newt’s brain decided to helpfully supply all the information he had been hiding from him. His stomach swooped. Suddenly the moment didn’t feel so free anymore. Suddenly it felt as if his throat were clogged with secrets.

Newt swallowed hard, trying to maintain his expression as it quickly slipped away. His hands felt tingly and cold. 

“Newton?” Hermann asked, frowning, now, as he saw Newt’s face. “Is something wrong?”

“Um.” Newt glanced aside at Vanessa, whose face went through a quick series of changes as she appeared to realize what he had been thinking. She nudged his knee with her foot.

“Newt actually has something he wants to talk about,” she said gently. “Right, Newt?”

He swallowed again, and pushed himself up to a sitting position, legs crossed. “Uh, yeah. I, uh, do.”

Hermann gave him a look up and down, not objective, but concerned. “Of course, Newton,” he said, “are you alright?”

Newt played with the laces of his boots as he spoke. “Um. Not… not exactly.” At Vanessa’s encouraging smile, he continued. “So, uh, you remember back in New York when I was talking to the Precursors, and you asked me if I was okay? And I told you yeah, I’m fine, and the past year was fine too?” He paused, staring down at the blanket. “I, uh, I lied. About that. About both of those things, actually. 

“Because actually the past year kind of sucked. Like, crossfit every goddamn day, screaming at interns who didn’t deserve it, exploitation of the masses _along_ with a plot to end the world, sucked. And the Precursors were _assholes_, man, just absolute fucking assholes.” Newt began to twist the hem of his jacket in his hands. “I mean, I know you told me not to believe anything they said, but for fuck’s sake Hermann if I had justㅡjustㅡI dunno, fought harder? Been stronger? Gone to that fucking PPDC checkup after the V-Day insanity died down? We wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place!”

Newt felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes, sliding over his cheekbones. “And IㅡI’m sorry, okay! I’m sorry I didn’t warn you I was getting bad again, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I remembered everything, and I’m so, _so_ fucking sorry I dragged you along on this clusterfuck away from everything you _actually_ care about!” He swiped a hand down his face. “I just…I’m sorry. I sound like a broken goddamn record, but all I can fucking say is I’m sorry. And that if you want to, I promise, you can leave.”

He looked up, bracing himself for shouting and a lecture in his face about how much of an idiot he clearly was, for this whole (perilous, wild, glorious) journey to come to an end. What he got stunned him into silence.

Hermann was red faced, yes, and clearly furious, but his eyes were puffy and there were tears threatening to fall from them. Part of the blanket was clenched in a tight fist.

“Newton, you're not the one to be sorry here,” he said in a tense voice, chest rising and falling heavily. “You’ve done nothing wrong. And I’m _not_ leaving.”

Newt’s voice cracked as he spoke. “Herㅡjust because we’re dealing with crazy aliens here doesn’t mean you have to feel obligated toㅡ”

“To what?” he snapped. “To stay? To finish this madness and make sure you’re alright at the end of it? Newton, do you really think I care so little for you that _this_ would make a difference?”

“But what if we don’tㅡ” Newt blurted, but Hermann’s look stopped him.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. And _you’re_ not the one who needs to apologize.” He aimed a look of pure, raw hatred right at the center of Newt’s forehead. “_What_ do you _creatures_ have to say for yourselves.”

Newt opened his mouth, ready for an explanation or tirade to come tumbling out, but there was nothing. His mind was silent. The Precursors barely even registered as there.

“Nothing,” he said softly. “They’re not saying anything.”

Hermann set his mouth in a tight line. “Fine. We will visit the grave of Trespasser, see if that starts a conversation then, and if not, I’m turning you in. I don’t believe for one moment that we can’t get you free another way.”

Newt felt about in his mind again, but the silence remained where it was; not thick and choking like it had been when he was buried deep within himself, but an empty space where he knew there was none. It was, after a year of endless noise, extremely jarring.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “They’re notㅡI’m sorry.”

Hermann shook his head and turned away, Vanessa stared out at the canyon rather than meet his eyes, quiet this whole time, and Newt bit down on his lip so hard he tasted iron. A cool evening wind howled through the rock below them. 

Other than that, however, it was completely, utterly quiet.


	11. San Francisco

What exactly _does_ one do when the fate of the world hangs in the balance, but one of the dependant factors includes parking in San Francisco?

If one is named Hermann Gottlieb, they stare disapprovingly at the car about to take the last spot on the curbside, pointedly glance at the handicapped sign hanging from their mirror, and when all else fails, punch the gas and slide into the spot with a grace of someone who stopped giving a fuck seven hundred and ninety-three miles ago.

The sunset, as Newt stepped out of the car, filtered down through the slits between buildings and cast a red, slurry glow on everything. It stabbed at his eyes, positioned in just the right place in the sky to be uncomfortable. He swallowed and glanced down at the pavement sparkling in the dying light; cheap mica chips catching the last few bits of sun. It stretched down the winding path of the hill, leading steeply towards the oceanfront, once littered with expensive homes, now bare and barely rebuilding.

Hermann set off down the hill at a brisk walk, cane clacking on the concrete. “Hermann,” Newt said, anxiety thrumming in his gut, “Hermann, can we please talk about this?”

“There’s nothing of matter to talk about,” Hermann said in a clipped voice. Newt shot Vanessa a pleading look.

“Hermann,” she said, “I know we’re on a time crunch, but I really think we should stop for a sec andㅡ”

“There is _nothing_,” Hermann repeated, spinning around to face them both, eyes flashing, “to talk about. Especially when we don’t know who we’re talking _to_.”

Newt took a step back, hurt flooding his face. “WhㅡHermann, it’s _me_! IㅡI’m sorry; that’s all I can say, and I know there’s nothing better or that can fix it but Iㅡ_please_.”

Hermann’s expression wavered for a moment, jaw tightening, before he spoke. “You could tell me, Newton.”

“Tell you what?!”

“What I did to make you think I wouldn’t help you! Why you never said _anything_! Why you never told me you were hurting this entire time that you could! I showed you myself when we Drifted, and I don’t know what exactly it was that destroyed your faith in me so completely, but I would very much like to know!” He stamped the butt of his cane on the ground with his last word, voice cracking. Newt sucked in a tiny gasp at the sound, flinching.

At the motion, Hermann’s face lost some of its color. He turned, continuing back down the street. “Let’s go. We’re losing light.”

By the time they reached the entrance to Tresspasser’s grave, the sun was nearly gone. Thin, misty twilight washed the ramshackle gate in a blanket of shadows and dying light. Propped up against the mixture of scrap iron and wood were miniature shrines: fistfulls of flowers, ribbons, pictures, letters, stuffed animals rotting from age. Graffiti was sprayed across any surface wide enough to hold it, ranging from taglines of local vandals to protest slogans and gang symbols. Fog soaked the path before them, obscuring everything but the very tips of Trespasser’s bones. The only sound was the ocean waves lapping against the cliffside.

Newt glanced aside at Hermann, who didn’t even look at him before passing through the archway. A plaque on the corner where it just began to rise read, “From their memories, we rebuild anew”. 

They followed the barely-visible pathway through the graveyard, passing small clusters of fallen bone fragments blown off by weaponry or souvenir hunters. The air hummed with a strange, electric energy, like walking through the aftermath of a forest fire with tree stumps still smoking. Newt felt his shoulders tense as a soft crack echoed through the fog, then a thump when a piece of Trespasser’s corpse fell to the ground. He reached back instinctively, surprised for a moment when Vanessa’s firm, callused fingers grabbed his hand. 

He swallowed down the hard lump in his throat. It tasted like cold iron.

After a minute of walking, the lower skeleton of Trespasser came into view. It’s bones were worn and bleached a pale white, chipped in some places, decaying in others where the marrow showed through. The fog rippled like a gossamer curtain, parting to reveal figure after figure stepping out from among the bones. Newt recognized them at once. 

It was the Oracle.

Their eyes, piercing blue, glittered in the light of the sunset. Each hoodie was the same, yet different forms of filthy and torn. They scattered themselves around the trio with small, soft steps that crunched in the wet grass. Then, one stepped forward and spoke.

“Welcome,” they said in a scratching purr, “welcome to the beginning of the end. Or the beginning of the beginning, depending on how you see it.”

Another moved closer. “The ending of the circle. The next part of a looping line. A truth universally revealed.”

The first one turned to Newt. “You and you and you and you have reached your final destination. And now you must make your choice.”

Newt strained the ears inside his mind, listening for anything the Precursors could be saying, but only silence greeted him. His tongue felt hollow in his mouth. “Theyㅡthey’re not saying anything.”

A third Oracle moved forward. “Nothing? They say nothing?” They turned to the second one. “Unprecedented.”

“That’s a five-dollar word,” Vanessa muttered semi-hysterically. Newt gave her hand a squeeze. 

The Oracle stepped back and began to speak to themselves in low tones, a clear threat of urgency audible. Their eyes all flashed brighter in unison, sparking like Christmas lights going supernova. “Nothing,” said one.

“We see nothing,” replied another, voice almost crunchy with static. 

“Nothing where?” Hermann asked sharply. All of the Oracles turned to him.

“The other world,” they said in the exact same voice. “They are silent. We see nothing.”

Newt felt his throat tighten, mind straining for any noise or sign of the Precursors. The cavernous space was still there, full of something, but pitch-blind. “Maybe you’d see a little better without those hoods,” he snapped.

A ripple of…something passed between the Oracle, and each looked at another. Then, in perfect unison, they reached up and pulled back their hoods. The trio gasped.

The graveyard was filled with humanoid kaiju; anthropomorphic up to their mottled, mangled faces covered in worn, glittering scales. Snouts twisted from some noses, while others had flat faces, long mouths, and anything in between. Their teeth protruded downwards in a cruel-looking overbite, most stained with meat juice or blood, or who knew what else. Every single one of their eyes, from the pair visible in each hoodie, to the smaller ones that littered their heads, glowed a bright, piercing blue. 

“What the _fuck_,” Vanessa said faintly.

“We walk between the worlds,” the Oracle replied together.

Hermann took a sharp intake of breath. “This is ridiculous,” he said, panic rising in his voice. “You expect us to understand any of this? That you truly can’t see into the Anteverse?” He took a step back. “No. No, no, pardon my language but _fuck_ all of thisㅡthis insanity!” He turned to Newt, face white as a sheet. “We’re going. I’m getting the PPDC; we should have never done this, and I _never_ should have listened toㅡ_them_.”

Newt’s heart leapt into his throat. He jerked away the hand Hermann was reaching for. “What? Hermann, no, you can’t, you don’t have any idea what they’ll do to you for not telling them! Hell, much less what the Precursors might do if they decide to start talking!”

“I don’t care,” he snarled, chest rising and falling rapidly. “Newton, I don’t know if you’re in your right mindㅡ”

“I _am_!”

“”I don’t know if it’s you! If any of this was or is you! If you really were in control this whole time, or this isn’t some massive facade and you’re still trapped and in danger!”

“Why,” Newt almost screamed, “would you think _I’m_ not the one in control right now?!”

“How can I be sure!?” Hermann looked as if he was about to cry. “When youㅡ” He swallowed hard. “When you told me that you had always been sure I would save you. Newtonㅡwas that even really you?”

“Of course!” Newt insisted. “Hermann, please, will you just _trust_ me?!”

“I don’t know if that will just put you in more danger!”

“Why do you care?!” Newt screeched, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “You agree to go along with this plan, you drive almost three _thousand_ miles on the off chance that it might save me, and now you’re trying to do this for my ‘safety’?! Why did you do _any_ of this?!”

“Because I love you!” Hermann shouted at the top of his lungs, and the entire graveyard went quiet.

His words echoed for several seconds, ringing out across the cliffside. Newt looked as if he had been slapped in the face. He felt his throat close up, and was unable to respond as he watched Hermann’s expression drop into one of horror. “Oh God,” he choked out, covering his mouth. “IㅡNewton, Iㅡ”

“_We are sorry_.”

Newt felt his mouth form the words without thinking. His eyes widened. “Preㅡhello?” he managed.

“_We are sorry,_” the Precursors said again. “_And we have thought, and we would like to say what we have to say_.”

At the silent stares of everyone around them, including Newt, the Precursors continued. “_We have traveled, as Geiszler said, almost three thousand miles across the United States of America. We have seen priceless art, and cheeseburgers, and terrible bars, and an insane amount of rocks, and a canyon that could fit every color in the world inside. We have seen what this world has to offer. We have seen its wonders and miracles and small beauties. We have seen the magic thing that you call love. And we want to see more_.”

They turned Newt’s head to Vanessa, then the Oracle, then Hermann. “_We will give up control, and all chances of control, of Geiszler’s body in exchange for his eyes. The use, we mean. And you must promise to show us the rest of Earth through them_.”

Hermann stared at them, for a good, long minute. “You’re serious,” he said cautiously. “You’re telling the truth?”

“_Bet_,” said the Precursors, and suddenly Newt felt his stomach rocket out of his throat. 

His eyes widened, vision going bright white, and he fell to his knees onto the grass. His vision snapped into focus, and it was like he was looking at himself from the third person. A scorching blue darkness clawed its way out of his eyes and throat, undulating and twisting in spirals of color, surging out of his body and into the sky above him. It collected in a massive, pulsing cloud, then burst apart with a bang like a gunshot. Tiny blue stars fell gently around the graveyard like rain, landing in the grass with a hiss before sparking out. 

Newt faintly heard someone gasping, and realized with a start that it was him. He opened his eyes, feeling back in his own body again, and gulped in air as he pitched forwards, catching himself with his hands. Footsteps hurried forward out of the corner of his eye, and Newt vaguely realized Hermann had gotten down next to him and was clutching his face. 

“Newton!” he cried frantically, hands and voice swimming into focus as Newt blinked the black spots from his vision. “Newtonㅡoh God, are youㅡNewton, look at me, please!” A hand fluttered over Newt’s back, easing him backwards and upright. “Newton, can you hear me?”

“They’re gone,” Newt croaked out, pulling air into his lungs like a man dying of thirst. “TheyㅡHermann, they’re gone.”

“Theㅡthe Precursors?” Hermann asked, face a picture of disbelief.

He felt his whole body shake like a leaf in a thunderstorm. “Yㅡyeah. IㅡI can feel them, kind of, like a space that looks empty but isn’t, but Iㅡthey’re gone. They did some _thing_ and went out of all of me and IㅡI feel like I’m gonna throw up, no joke, but I don’t feel likeㅡlike I have to fight them. For control. It’s just me now.”

Hermann ran a hand down his face, eyes red and almost spilling over with tears. “God. Newton, I was afraidㅡ”

“It’s okay,” he said, bringing up a hand to clutch at Hermann’s arm. “I’m okay.”

“I meant it,” Hermann blurted out. “When I saidㅡ”

“I know. And I remember, Hermann. When you said it the first time.”

Hermann’s brow creased. “What?”

“That night,” Newt said, nerves tumbling in his already-roiling stomach, “V-Day. IㅡI know you forgot, but weㅡ”

“I never forgot,” Hermann said softly, realization passing over his features. “I thought you had…Newton, I _always_ remembered.” His eyes were huge and a deep, warm brown, glistening gently with tears. Newt moved his arm up to wipe one away.

“So did I. And I loved you the whole damn time, too.”

Hermann leaned down and pressed their foreheads together, warmth pulsing from his skin. “I never said it enough,” he murmured. “I didn’t say it at all.”

Newt let out a weary chuckle. “I think we’ve got time now. If you wanna start a habit.” He let his eyes flutter shut, breathing in Hermann’s perpetual scent of ink and chalkdust, and the clean ocean air. “I love you.” He wanted to start now; for the rest of his life to be filled with just this perfect harmony he felt thrumming between them. “_I_ love you.”

Hermann sniffed and moved to press a firm, lingering kiss to Newt’s forehead. “And I love _you_. Not what they made you become. Not the lies they told me. _You_.”

His head turned at the sound of footsteps, and he realized that Vanessa had hurried up beside them. When she saw Newt’s eyes open blearily, she let out a sigh of relief. 

“Oh my God. Newt, you scared the _shit_ out of me.”

Reaching out a hand, she pulled Hermann to his feet and used the other to aid him in helping Newt up. When both were standing, she threw her arms around them and pulled them in tight for a hug. Newt let out half a sob and pressed in close, feeling the arms of them (his _friends_, these two glorious people who had stayed with him across the country) around him. 

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said finally, taking Hermann’s hand and striding forward. Vanessa followed behind, the three of them walking through the fog as if their path were lit by a lighthouse at the end. Newt felt strangely lighter; the Precursors still present in his mind, but silent and small within his control. His heart felt as if it could bounce out of his chest. He took in a large, clear breath of air, feeling it rush into his lungs and out. The world seemed to thrum with the truth that he was alive, and he was free.

When they reached the gate, all three of them turned back to look at the graveyard. What they saw, after everything that had happened on their trip, didn’t come as much of a surprise.

The ground was empty, filled with nothing but moonlight drifting through the fog, and a pale skeleton glowing as it reached up to the starlit sky above them.


	12. The Road Home

The plane home to Tokyo, Vanessa’s car in the vehicle hold of the nicest flight Hermann had allowed Newt to book for them, had an air so different from the one to America, it was nearly jarring. Newt rested his head on Hermann’s shoulder most of the way, relaxed for the first time in a long while. His head felt oddly silent and clean, like returning to a spick-and-span school after summer break. The quiet was taking some getting used to; that, and the lack of anxiety about losing control at any moment. 

He found himself drifting off into himself at odd moments; not falling asleep, but rather slipping into a state of dissociation that was impossible now that he was the only one with the keys to his mind. Newt would stare at some random point, feeling his body go sideways and fuzzy, only to suddenly realize that he was still in control (and more than likely weirding out those around him with his gaze). It was strange, relearning how to be entirely a person again. His body was his own responsibility now, and Newt wasn’t used to taking that on one hundred percent of the time.

As they flew over the Pacific, he found his eyes glued to the window and the ocean below. Just over a year ago, not even the most intrepid of fighter pilots would have dared cross its breadth. Now here he was, in a plane full of people thinking mostly about the destination ahead of them (although he was sure lingering fears still swam about their minds). The surface of the water was a shimmering, deep blue under the sun above, stretching endlessly out in every direction across the curvature of the Earth.

Newt looked away, dizzy. All of thatㅡthe entire planetㅡcould have been gone if the Precursors hadn’t been subdued. Would people have found a way to stop hiㅡ_them_, in time? Would the damage have been too much to bear? Questions simmered in the pit of his stomach, occupying him so much that he started when Hermann slipped a hand into his.

“I can hear you catastrophizing,” he murmured, intertwining their fingers together. “That’s my job.”

“You know I’m gonna be thinking about this forever,” Newt replied. “Or at least a long, long time. We got out of this by the fucking skin of our teeth, Herm.”

“And yet we did. Because you had the _very_ human audacity to be very brave, and very stubborn, and to apply that creativity of yours to something other than cobbling together renegade PONS units.”

Newt snorted. “Y’know the crazy thing?”

“I’ve known plenty these past few weeks. I encourage you to try me.”

He glanced aside. “Even after all this… fucking insanity, I still would’ve done it. The Drift with the brain, I mean. ‘Cause like, yeah it lead to a bunch of really scary and awful stuff, but just for me. It saved the world. Hell, it saved everyone. And I think that’s a pretty big no-brainer of a price to pay.”

Hermann’s expression darkened. “I know. And I would have done the same. I just wish I could have gone with you that first time and not only the second. We could have…” He trailed off, clearly running through as many what-ifs as Newt.

Newt rubbed a hand up and down his forearm. “Hey. You had no idea it would work; in fact, you told me a bunch of times it would kill me! And I wasn’t too sure I would make it myself. I never would have let you do it.”

“I know. You’re horrifically sentimental like that.”

“Oh is that what they call ‘caring about the person you love’ now?” Newt snickered. Hermann gently smacked the hand on his arm.

“Hush. I just mean that I can’t help thinking about all the ways I could have stopped you from going through that. Now that the Precursors are gone, I can feel our Drift link reopening again. It’s… faint,” he said at Newt’s concerned expression, “but it’s there. And I don’t like at all what I’m seeing.” He squeezed the hand he had been holding. “They hurt you. Just as much as you told me, and more. And I know they can hear me, so I want to say that I will _never_ forgive them for that.”

Newt listened on instinct for a response, but none came. He shook his head slightly. “I don’t plan to, either. It was fucked up.” He swung his feet back and forth slightly, thankful for the extra leg room. “Majorly fucked up, in fact. But honestly? Right now I’m just glad that you and I and Vanessa are gonna be okay.” 

He twisted around in his seat and looked back at Vanessa, who was absorbed in the book she had purchased at the airport. When she noticed Newt looking, she gave him a thumbs up. He mouthed “thanks” to work around the noise-canceling headphones she wore.

They touched down several hours later and, jet-lagged and adrenaline beginning to wear off, trudged back to Hermann’s flat like a herd of elephants on the last day of a migration. It felt strange after weeks of disuse; a thin layer of dust on almost everything, cold from the lack of heating, and smelling of must and old teabags. Hermann wrinkled his nose but followed the other two as they dropped their bags on the living room floor and made a beeline for the bedroom.

Vanessa face planted magnificently onto Hermann’s bed, absently reaching up an arm and pulling him down with her. She let out a long, slightly dramatic groan.

“Jesus Christ on God.”

Newt let out a soft chuckle and sat on the edge of the bed, shimmying up to lay down next to Hermann. They took each others’ hands once more.

“Hey,” he said, turning to face him, watching his eyelashes make thin shadows on his cheekbones. Hermann smiled, eyes soft as he brushed a strand of messy hair from Newt’s forehead.

“Hello. I’m very glad you’re here.”

Newt moved forward to rest his head under his chin, burrowing his nose into the crook of Hermann’s shoulder. The position, familiar from their nights on the road, now felt free of guilt and confined to their own little world. “Me too, babe.” He traced a thumb across the top of Hermann’s fingers. “It wouldn’t be a good end to this if you weren’t.”

Despite the warmth humming in his chest, Newt felt… empty. He had spent over a year with an entire race inside his head; an alien race with billions and billions of voices that, despite what Hermann said, he knew had changed who he was. And now they were gone.

But lying there, curled up between his partner in work, life, and a way that words couldn’t describe, and his best friend, he felt safe. Two different kinds of love. Two different kinds of family. Two people he’d grown even closer to over the past few weeks. 

The emptiness would fade. He had better things to take its place.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

The thing about Vanessa was that she wasn’t actually an idiot.

She knew, of course, that was how people saw her. A beautiful model who dressed like that? Who spoke like _that_? Who enjoyed being silly and girly and loud and unapologetic in the parts that made her up? Major idiot. Their mistake.

The thing about Vanessa was that she was actually really smart. Like, you didn’t get the gigs and interviews she did as a freelance journalist without being extremely fucking good at your job. She’d sat down with _Beyoncé_. She knew her stuff.

And Vanessa knew that as the things she wasㅡblack (to those who didn’t know her entire geneology) and female and gayㅡshe couldn’t afford to let people think otherwise. There wasn’t room for a lack of self-confidence when you looked like her. You had to be one hundred percent on board with how good you were, or people would take advantage of that and drop you like it was hot. No excuses for those bitches. Welcome to life.

There was, however, one person that Vanessa admittedly acted like the dictionary definition of an idiot around, and her name was Karla Wendla Gottlieb, and Vanessa was in love with her.

This personal circus act of lovesick clownery had been going on since secondary school, when Vanessa had realized two things: one, that she did not like men, and two, that she very, _very_ much liked Karla. Of course this was Germany around the turn of the century, and with all the hubbub of the Wall coming down, the Cold War finally ending, and Lars Gottlieb’s perpetual heteronormative assholery, she never really got around to filling Karla in on that detail. Then they both left for University, and Vanessa experienced the trials and defeats, the epic highs and lows of American modeling and all the complications _that_ brought to her dietary habits, tackled those particular demons, and then giant aliens started spilling out of a crack in the Pacific Ocean.

Also, she was pretty certain that Hermann would be horrified if he knew she was in love with his twin sister, and _that_ scared her more than any Kaiju. 

So, when Vanessa awoke to banging on Hermann’s apartment door and a familiar voice yelling (politely) to be let in, her heart dropped into her stomach.

Newt raised his head sleepily as she slid out of their pile of limbs, and she put a finger to her lips.

“Don’t you _dare_,” she hissed, “wake up Hermann. And don’t follow me.” She paused. “Actually, y’know what? Don’tㅡdon’t do anything. Just stay here.”

Vanessa approached the front door, her whole body almost vibrating with nerves. She unlocked it quietly, and tried to open it slow enough to tamp down any noise, but Karla destroyed that notion almost immediately.

“Where have you all _been_?!” she shouted, bursting past the threshold and into the flat. Her hair was buzzed too short to look properly frazzled, but her clothes, typically an expertly maintained set of slacks, button up, blazer, and shined boots, clearly displayed her disarray. She turned and pulled Vanessa into a hug in one smooth motion. “Hermann sent me a text; something about ‘going on a trip’, but nothing more.” She pulled back and looked firmly into Vanessa’s eyes. “Nessa, what happened? Are you all alright? What was Newt doing with youㅡhell, what on Earth was he _doing_ this past year?”

Vanessa swallowed hard. “So… it’s a long story. And we’re okay, I promise, and I’ll tell you all about everything later, I swear. But…” She glanced over Karla’s shoulder to see Newt and Hermann standing just inside the hallway. Newt was leaned up against the wall, arms crossed, and one ankle swung jauntily over the other. He raised an eyebrow and winked. Hermann just looked like he wanted his sister distracted as long as possible.

_Well_, she thought, taking a deep breath, _time to face the proverbial music_.

“I,” she began again, “okay. Do you remember when we went to the South of France back when we were twelve, and you and Hermann and I went hiking, and we found that watering hole? And it was the South and also France, so it was like, insanely hot, so we all took off our clothes and went swimming? Well,” she amended, twisting her hands together nervously, “you and I went swimming; Hermann just sat on the rocks and read a book because he’s a nerd.”

“That water was most certainly infected with bacteria,” she heard Hermann mutter under his breath. Vanessa flipped him the bird behind her back.

Karla looked at her, perplexed. “I… don’t quite see where this is going, but yes, vividly. You borrowed Hermann’s red bucket hat that always made him look like that British bear.”

“Paddington,” Vanessa said. “Right. And we went in the water and were swimming, and I pushed you under. And then you came up. And you had lakeweed in your hair so I pulled it out.”

Karla’s face pinkened slightly at the memory, but still maintained a confused expression. “Yes, and?”

Vanessa’s words began to come faster as her stomach twisted into sailor’s knots. “And you asked me what I was doing that day, and I told you I was getting lakeweed out of your hair. But I lied.” She swallowed down a lump in her throat. “I was trying to get up the nerve to kiss you.”

Karla’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. “OㅡOh?”

“Yeah.” She sucked in a breath. “Actually, I’ve been trying to get up the nerve to kiss you for twenty five years.”

Karla let out a tiny whoosh of air, like the wind had been knocked out of her. When she didn’t start yelling, however, Vanessa continued. 

“Because, like, I’ve never taken a Drift test with you and I still know we’d be compatible, and I would give anything in the world to get inside your head. Because I’ve known you for as long as I can remember, and there are still so many things I want to tell you and ask you, and I want to keep knowing you for forever. Because you’ve seen me at my worstㅡlike, mentally _and_ physicallyㅡand you stayed. And I’ve seen you that way and you _let_ me. And whenever I’m happy, or see something really amazing, my first thought is always that I wish you were there to share it with me. And I know that you started fencing to live out your fantasy of being a knight, and that you shine your shoes every Sunday because you have a reminder for it, and you take your tea with almond milk not because you’re lactose intolerant, but because you just think it tastes better. And I know we sort of settled into our own identities by ourselves, but whenever you’re around me I feel _safer_ even though I’ve got at least four inches on you, and I always have to stop myself from taking your arm.” She wiped the beginnings of tears from her eyes. “Karla Gottlieb I fucking love you. I love you so much it’s unreal. I’ve come face to face with with a Kaiju-person-future-seeing hybrid, gone headfirst into a road trip I didn’t even know would work, and yelled _multiple times_ at an alien race of genocidal maniacs who only stopped at Earth because of the fucking _power of love_. And y’know what? None of that comes close to how scared I feel right now.”

Impulsively, she took Karla’s hand. “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this absolutely batshit experience, it’s that if love is powerful enough to change the minds of the freaking Kaiju overlords? It’s worth fighting for with you.”

There was a long, terrible moment of silence, and Vanessa felt her chest grow tighter and tighter. She quickly dropped Karla’s hand and turned to move away. “Uh, sorry, that was a lotㅡI’m just gonnaㅡ”

“Ohㅡdear,” said Karla, blinking quickly, and pulled her into a kiss.

Vanessa had kissed girls before; trial runs to figure out how it worked and what she liked, a few brief flings here and there with ones who were always buzzed brunettes with pressed slacks, but nothing had prepared her for what it was like to kiss Karla Gottlieb. It wasn’t storybook perfect, or full of fireworks, or anything like that. It was real. And that made it billions of times better.

Her body felt like she was sitting in front of a roaring fire, the places where Karla’s hands rested tingling with nerves. Karla’s shirt crumpled under Vanessa’s hands as she ran them under her blazer to grip the back of it, tilting her head to deepen the kiss. She felt her foot actually _pop_, like this was Princess Diaries One and Two or something. Her head was careening steadily towards Jupiter.

When Karla pulled back, she blinked again like someone had just woken her from a dream. “I, er, might need some explanation about the whole ‘Kaiju-hybrids’ situation,” she said dazedly. “And the road trip bit. Especially the part about the Precursors.”

Vanessa let out a little huff of a laugh and pressed a giddy kiss to her nose. “Yeah, of course. It’s a _long_ story.” She spared a look back at Newt and Hermann, the former of whom was grinning widely, and the other appearing to be processing a lot of his childhood in a new light. “You two have, like, damage control and shit do do, right? Go have fun.”

“This is my apartment,” Hermann said. Karla made a flapping motion with her free hand.

“I’ll make sure we don’t burn the place down. You worry too much.”

“I worry exactly the right amount, thank you,” Hermann replied, pulling a face, but Newt was already making way towards their bags.

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

And so life, much to the contrary of the expectations of the now-dormant Precursors, went on. 

Newt and Hermann returned to the Shanghai apartment, armed with a steely determination to salvage what they could. They discovered nothing of value in any of open rooms, and Newt found himself gripping Hermann’s hand tighter as he helped him up the stairs to the bedroom. The sound of the tank humming could still be heard, and he braced himself.

Hermann pulled back the sliding door, and Newt forced himself to look over at the tank occupying the left half of the room. After a few seconds of realization, he let out a shocked wheeze and stumbled for the nearest wastebin.

The brainㅡAliceㅡfloated lifelessly in its tank, surrounded by murky yellow water and smudged lipstick scrawls. Its tendrils were half-rotted away, drifting in pieces around the swollen and pruney brain. It had clearly been dead for some time.

Newt pushed himself away from the now vomit-filled stainless steel trash can and sat up against the foot of the bed. “They killed it,” he murmured, putting a hand over Hermann’s as he hurried down beside him and rubbed circles on Newt’s back. “They actually kept a promise for once. They fucking killed it.”

It took some time, but they managed to haul it to the back alleyway of the high-rise on a luggage cart. If any of Newt’s former neighbors were put off by the sounds of viscerally satisfied wet thwacks, then, well. They never called the authorities.

Things moved slower after that. Newt got a therapist. Hermann got one as well, but with a looser schedule. Mako Mori was discreetly informed of the past year and the subsequent Road Trip That Saved the World, and after hugging Newt tightly for a good, long minute, got to work erasing any trace of the Precursors’ damage. Liwen Shao got a very strongly-worded resignation letter on her desk, along with a copy of _Das Kapital_ and an article written back when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had been guillotined by his own factory workers. Newt wasn’t sure if it made any difference, but it was a step forward in allowing himself the little pleasures.

Vanessa and Karla invited themselves along on Newt’s series of smaller road trips across the globe, using the stupid amount of money from the Precursors, plus Hermann’s considerable raise as head of K-Sci, to show the tenants in his brain the rest of the world. There was no more color commentary, but Newt still felt a little twinge in his temples whenever he ate a burger. He ignored it. Veganism was a memory best left forgotten.

There was evidence of the damage, of course. Newt woke most nights screaming for a long time. He still wasn’t a fan of crowds. During a tour of Hermann’s new lab, a stray hologram of a Kaiju brain sent him spiraling into a panic attack that took the better part of an hour to subside. The color blue never quite stopped putting him in a state of unease.

The difference, of course, was that Hermann was hurting too; had always been hurting from their joint Drift and the war, and now they were able to face those demons together. They took long walks on the beach, sometimes just staring out at the ocean. They cooked dinner and had pizza nights where they folded the bread into a living thing with two pairs of hands. Hermann proposed. Newt trained their cat to carry their ring. Life was molded into a thing worth treasuring and following from one moment to the next.

They didn’t always talk about Newt’s year alone, or what he saw during the forced Drifts with Alice, but it happened. There wasn’t silence anymore. Mind to mind, and heart to heart, because when you Drift you feel like there is nothing to talk about but there is always more to say. The words “I love you” never go out of style.

And Newt Geiszlerㅡwunderkind, scientist, emissary, traveler, and world-saving rockstarㅡgot better. Because Alice was dead. Hermann was not. And Newton wasn’t, either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i started the outline for newton isn't dead around september 13 of 2018, and just over a year later, it's finally finished. hooooly shit. this is the first long-form multichapter fic i've ever completed, and i'm genuinely really proud of how it came out. thank you endlessly to charles, my darling beta, for fixing all my formatting errors and being a little bastard person. thank you jay for encouraging this mess in the first place. and of course thank you to joseph fink for the incredible podcast that inspired this; fucking stan alice isn't dead it's literally so good. also, the soundtrack i made is now available here: https://open.spotify.com/user/macremae/playlist/7oOYdtR0UFriEEdP05laGF?si=-HKqyDSvRn6C7zDRzG3rXg


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